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THE CLOUDED PEARL 


NOVELS BY BERTA RUCK 


HIS OFFICIAL FIANCEE 

THE WOOING OF ROSAMOND FAYRE 

THE BOY WITH WINGS 

IN ANOTHER GIRL’S SHOES 

THE GIRLS AT HIS BILLET 

miss million’s MAID 

THE THREE OF HEARTS 

THE YEARS FOR RACHEL 

A LAND-GIRL’S LOVE STORY 

THE DISTURBING CHARM 

SWEETHEARTS UNMET 

THE BRIDGE OF KISSES 

SWEET STRANGER 

THE ARRANT ROVER 

THE WRONG MR. RIGHT 

THE SUBCONSCIOUS COURTSHIP 

SIR OR MADAM 

THE DANCING STAR 

THE LEAP YEAR GIRL 

THE CLOUDED PEARL 





THE 

CLOUDED PEARL 

A Novel 


BY 

BERTA RUCK 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
1924 








?Z3 

' ^ 

*- -u 


Copyright, 1924, 
By BERTA RUCK 




PRINTED IN THE U. 6. A. BY 

tETjr <Quinn & JSobtn Company 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY 


OCT -7 1924 ^ 

\ 

© Cl A 8 0 8 2 4 5 





To 

E. NESBIT 

WITH LOVE, AND THE THANKS OF YOUTH 
(ANCIENT AND MODERN) 

To-day those Modern Young, my sons, devour 
Each word your wise gay wit has said or sung. 
Accept this tribute to your fadeless power, 
From one you moulded as the Ancient Young l 

B. R. 





CONTENTS 


PART ONE—THE CAUSE 


CHAPTER 

I 

Her Beginnings 






PAGHT 

3 

II 

Tea in the Padded Room 





22 

III 

Dinner at the Ritz . 

. 





46 

IV 

Dance at the Berkeley 

. 





63 

V 

Love-making X la Mode 

. 





77 

VI 

Cocktails on the Yacht 

• 





100 

I 

PART TWO—THE 

Storms at Sea . 

CURE 



117 

II 

Isle of Beauty . 





. 

128 

III 

Salt of Life 





. 

147 

IV 

Queries 





. 

157 

V 

Other Side of Eden 





. 

167 

VI 

The Mock Brother . 





. 

179 

VII 

Mirror of Venus 





. 

187 

VIII 

Voice of the Past . 





. 

197 

IX 

Romance and Reality 





. 

209 

X 

Long Distance Call 





. 

215 

XI 

Change Here 





. 

226 

XII 

Twang at the Strings 





. 

236 

XIII 

Night Freedom . 





. 

244 

XIV 

The Two Terrors . 





. 

253 

XV 

Day After . 





. 

283 

XVI 

Talk .... 





. 

297 

XVII 

The Loth-to-Depart 





. 

313 


vii 










PART ONE—THE CAUSE 




















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THE CLOUDED PEARL 


CHAPTER I 

HER BEGINNINGS 


M ARGARET VERITY, at nineteen, was what is 
called (as a term of reproach) “a modern girl.” 
To-day’s girl is broadcasted to a world’s op¬ 
probrium. Pilloried in the press, she is the theme of 
article after outraged article: “What Is Wrong with the 
Modern Girl?” “Why the Modern Girl Has Lost All 
Charm,” and “Can the Modern Girl Love?” (Answer: in 
the negative.) 

Something too much of this. Have her middle-aged 
accusers no memories of their own youth? Dare they 
quote it as perfect? Out of their own teens and twen¬ 
ties does no giggling spectre raise its head? None? Ah! 

At times one fancies that even now girls are merely 
what they always were and always will be: namely, girls. 

At other times one is brought upstanding by an ex¬ 
ample such as my friend Mrs. Verity’s Margaret. She 
might have posed for the symbolic figure of deprecated 
modern girlhood. 

Brusque, blase, and neurotic! She was all that, and 

more. Not an idea in her head but of the hectic chase 

3 


4 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


after amusement from morn till night—or, rather, from 
afternoon until morning! An annexer of men, to whom 
she brought no gift of young love, but simply exaspera¬ 
tion and disturbance! A peevish, pallid, rouging, cock¬ 
tail-absorbing, chain-smoking, all-night-dancing, mother- 
snubbing modern of the most ungirlish type—that was 
Margaret Verity just before “the adventure.” 

I am going to tell you all I know about that adven¬ 
ture and of what it meant to her, but I must go back first 
to Margaret’s beginnings. 


2 

There was nothing the matter with those. The girl’s 
roots were set in simple, wholesome soil. Her “inherit¬ 
ances,” as North country people call them, were sound 
enough. 

Her mother, my friend Mrs. Verity, was a dear. Not 
clever; she never pretended to be that. Not a firm char¬ 
acter; she certainly never pretended to be that! But she 
was as sweet as the simple flowers with which she filled 
the garden of her Sussex cottage. Pretty, too. The 
ingenuous face that artists used to call “the English 
rose type,” and used to paint looking wistful in a big 
picture hat tilted a trifle to one side, with an immense 
pink tulle motor veil tied round it and under the chin— 
that was Violet Verity when young. Clear eyes, upright 
figure, and good complexion. A good walker, a good 
tennis player (for nineteenth century standards), a good 
manager (of a tiny income), a good housewife and gar¬ 
dener. Deadly dull it sounds? Believe me, she was not 


HER BEGINNINGS 


5 


dull; she was saved from that by a gift which a great 
many more intelligent people of stronger character just 
simply have not got. 

The genius for loving she had. 

She asked no more from heaven than some one to whom 
to devote her life. Heaven sent Jack Verity. 

Very attractive he must have been, though I’ve only 
seen his portraits. They are extraordinarily like his 
little daughter: Margaret inherited his short, determined 
profile, his carriage of the head buoyantly set on a proud 
neck, his eyes (large, wide apart and cloudy-grey, trimmed 
with a good deal of brown fringe). Men voted him a 
thoroughly good fellow; women not only loved, but liked 
him. He was a sailor—of all men the most idealized of 
women. 

One hesitates to decide that this is because sailors are 
so much away from home. There remains this convic¬ 
tion, that a sailor is of all men the most pleasant, the 
easiest husband. 

Mrs. Verity went so far as to say that a sailor was the 
only possible person to marry. Other men, Violet Ver¬ 
ity said, were always there; taking you as a matter of 
course, seeing you at your worst, bringing out the most 
prosaic side of you. Other men make married life one 
monotonous long lane with no turning between the altar 
and the grave. Whereas with a sailor husband one knows, 
on the one hand, those months of love in absence, of 
memories, of anticipation while he is at sea. On the 
other hand, one has the contrast of those glorious weeks 
when he is at home, when one lives at concert pitch as a 
bride, when one puts one’s best foot foremost as a house- 


6 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


keeper, when one orders hot meat—even game!—for 
luncheon every day, when one puts on every morning a 
crisp clean blouse (she married in pre-jumper days), and 
when one can generally keep up the honeymoon atmos¬ 
phere. 

The Veritys kept up that atmosphere for years after 
their baby girl arrived. Even she added to it. Pres¬ 
ently she was old enough to lisp an absurd ritual that 
her mother taught her. 

“What are you, Margaret darling?” asked the mother. 
“Tell Daddy. (Listen, sweetheart.) What are you 
now?” 

“A sailor’s daughter,” answered the mite, sturdy in her 
navy-blue morsel of a jersey, with an inch of navy serge 
skirt. 

“Yes; and what will you be?” 

“A sailor’s wife!” 

“Yes! And what do you hope to be?” 

“A sailor’s mummy.” 

“Splendid!” laughed Jack Verity; and he caught the 
child up, tossed her till the brown hair danced on her 
head, while he shouted that music-hall ditty of his day: 

“I want you to meet my girl! 

Such a girl, such a girl; such a pearl!” 

This was the atmosphere in which that baby began to 
grow up. Her young parents adored each other and her. 
Glorious times they all three had at the cottage, up to the 
very last moment of his leave. 

Then he would kiss them a dozen times over “for the 
last time”; he’d pick up his bags, his heavy blue mackin- 


HER BEGINNINGS 


7 


tosh, and go back to sea; and Mrs. Verity would be left 
to eat up the cold meats and to finish wearing the once- 
put-on blouses, and to save up for the next leave of the 
sailor sweetheart. 

He went down with his ship in the late autumn of 1914. 

After which you can imagine that there was only one 
thing that kept her caring to live: 

His little girl. 


3 

In that white-walled cottage in Sussex by the sea, there, 
on the bleak lap of the Downs, little Margaret Verity 
spent the next few years of a hardy life. 

The child was brought up to go out every day in any 
weather. There were long tramps in the rain (and this 
was the girl who later never put her little French-heeled 
foot to the earth except when she stepped from the Rolls). 
A bedroom without a fireplace and with windows flung 
open winter and summer (this was hers who afterwards 
grumbled if the least thing went wrong with the steam 
heat). One makeshift serge frock, home-knitted jerseys, 
a couple of “prints,” a mackintosh, thick boots, and a 
tarn o’ shanter—not much more in the whole of her ward¬ 
robe (she who afterwards never wore the same dance 
frock three times running, and who could not have counted 
the number of her other garments). She learnt to wash 
up, to lay the table, to do any odd jobs to lighten the 
work for their single servant (she who was presently the 
waiters’ terror and the nightmare of the chambermaids!) 
Every morning of her life she splashed in her icy-cold 


8 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


tub (yes, this same Margaret who at nineteen must wal¬ 
low for hours up to her chin in heavily perfumed water 
so hot that she emerged at last parboiled, enervated, 
dizzy and slack). No luxuries did she know then; no 
parties, no chocolates, no silk underclothes, no fragile, 
expensive shoes; none, even, of the comforts to which a 
child of her age is at this era accustomed. All this, not 
because my friend Mrs. Verity was any Spartan by na¬ 
ture, but merely because the mother and the child were 
at that time what people call “miserably poor.” 

The widow had her pension, her cottage and garden, 
and that was all. She couldn’t afford a daily governess. 
Margaret did lessons with her mother during the few 
hours that she spent indoors. They grew their own vege¬ 
tables ; they kept hens, sold eggs; they achieved two mar¬ 
vellous hedges of sweet peas from which they used to 
pull sheaves of blossoms which they packed up and sent 
away, to sell, also, at eighteen pence or half a crown a 
long box. This money was to be saved up to get a gar¬ 
den hose, at four shillings a foot, which Mrs. Verity could 
not yet afford, and a set of French cooking pans for her 
kitchen. About the menu there was always a good deal 
of hashed mutton, steamed vegetables, and rice pudding. 

They seemed to do Margaret no harm. 

When she was eleven and a half I went down, to find 
her the picture of health and bloom. 

From the beach where her mother and I sat on a break¬ 
water to gossip, I watched the child going in for a dip 
in her club costume that fitted her like a coat of dark 
blue paint. Her shape was still childish, but of what 
beauty! Tall, without a trace of gawky coltishness, she 


HER BEGINNINGS 


9 


was strongly, harmoniously fashioned in every limb. I 
quoted: “ ‘That our sons may grow up as the young 
plants and our daughters be as the polished corners of 
the Temple!’ Both prayers have been answered in your 
girl.” 

“She is so like Jack. She ought to be rather lovely 
when she grows up.” 

“What are you going to do with her then?” 

“She says she will earn her own living and get rich and 
buy us both such pretty things. She longs for pretty 
things! But she makes her own pleasures here: she is 
perfectly happy with her shell collection and her wild- 
flower collection, and her books, and me. A profession? 
I suppose so. . . . It seems extraordinary,” mourned 
this gentle late Victorian; “we never had to think of such 
things . . . Margaret! Darling! You’ve been in long 
enough. Come in, now. Please! At once!” 

“Another five minutes,” the child’s clear treble rang 
back over the water. “Don’t fuss, Mums.” 

Already you see whose was the ruling spirit of those 
two. 

“The darling has more character than I ever had,” the 
mother explained. “I wish she had more opportunities. 
Nobody in Jack’s family can do a thing for her (they 
are all too poor). There is nothing to hope for from 
any of my family (all far too rich). There’s only my 
uncle Tom, the dear old fellow who gave me away, and 
came all the way from South America to do it! He 
hasn’t too much money. Every now and then, bless him, 
he manages to send us a cheque. At Christmas, some¬ 
times, it has made all the difference.” Unsuspecting 


10 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


dear! Little did she foresee the difference which would 
be brought about to both of them by the arrival of her 
uncle’s next cheque! 


4 

This came just before Margaret’s twelfth birthday, 
with a note to say that it was to be spent just as the 
young woman chose in making that day a success, and 
with love from her affectionate old uncle. 

It was for five pounds. 

How often was Margaret Verity to toss away that sum 
on a bet, a pair of dancing shoes, a casket of some ex¬ 
otic scent! 

What a fortune five pounds seemed to her at the time 
of Uncle Tom’s cheque! 

The cottage could not hold her. 

Hatless, she skipped out into the frosty garden (it 
was near Christmas). Up and down the path to the 
little white gate three times she skipped before she could 
even tell her mother what had been in that envelope. 

“Five pounds. Five pounds!” 

In imagination the child spent it many times over in 
less than five minutes. 

“First of all, Mums must have a smart new hat. You 
must! I hate that old black velvet beast you’ve worn for 
centuries! And one of those ducky bead hand bags I saw 
in a ’vertisement instead of your leather one that’s gone 
all shiny and horrid where you hold it! And you’ve never 
had furs like other people’s mumsies in the pictures in 
the Tatler. Do you think a grey-squirrel muff and col- 


HER BEGINNINGS 


11 


lar right up to your nose, or what is a sable stole? You 
ought to have one. I adore rich furs; I’ve never seen any . 
We can get you some out of all this money, so—” 

“Margaret! The money isn’t to be spent on your 
mums at all! It’s to be spent on what you’d enjoy.” 

“But that’s getting things for you!” retorted the little 
eager creature. I can imagine her, flinging arms about 
her mother’s neck and opening those great eyes (grey- 
blue as an English summer sky, fringed with brown back¬ 
ward-curling lashes that softened the brightness of her 
glance), starry with excitement. “Don’t be silly, Mums. 
Can’t I do what I like with my own five—” 

“My pet, you must think of your Uncle Tom. As he 
said what he wished done with his cheque, you will have 
to spend it as he wished.” 

“Tiresome old thing! Oh, no! I don’t mean that. 
Frightfully kind old thing! I’ll do as he wants.” 

“He wants to give you what you would call a good 
time for your birthday. You are to choose.” 

Neither of them dreamt what was to hang upon that 
choice of Margaret’s! Supposing she had elected to give 
a Christmas party for the few children of that neigh¬ 
bourhood, with a tiny Christmas tree, cakes made at 
home, and a lucky dip, with toys from the sixpenny ba¬ 
zaar! Even the conjuror from Brighton. . . . 

She thought of this. 

If she had followed those thoughts how many lives 
would have been different! 

But with a swift shake of her head Margaret decided: 
“No. I don’t choose a party. That means staying here. 
I choose to go up to London. With my own mums of 


12 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


course. I haven’t been to London since that one time. 
When I was quite a little girl, when darling Daddy took 
us to the Zoo. You remember?” 

“Yes, dearest; I remember.” 

“We’ll go again,” planned the twelve-year-old, still un¬ 
sophisticated. “Do you remember how Daddy laughed 
because I was frightened of a ride on the camel? I said 
he was too tall and I would only go in the little llama 
cart. Daddy said a sailor’s daughter must be brave, and 
so I went on the camel, only the camel rolled so that I 
was nearly seasick! Of course, I was only a very little 
girl then. You remember, don’t you, Mums?” 

“Yes.” 

It was a knife into Violet’s heart every time the child 
revived memories of Jack. Yet not for worlds would she 
have checked them. 

“So we’ll go to the Zoo in the morning and in the 
afternoon—oh, would it be too much? There would be 
enough money,” urged Margaret, “and I’ve never been, 
though lots of people of twelve have, and some people of 
eleven—” 

“Been where?” 

“To the theatre! to a matineei Do, do let us go to 
‘Peter Pan.’ Let’s go up by the early train on Monday.” 

5 

This meant a drive of four miles to the Junction. 

A piercing morning it was; skies pearl-clear over frost- 
powdered Downs; road like iron, corrugated into frozen 
ruts under the farmer’s cart wheels. 


HER BEGINNINGS 13 

The farmer’s cart was up in good time; Margaret 
wasn’t. 

In spite of Spartan upbringing she was no born early 
riser. Also, she hadn’t been able to find her best gloves, 
her stockings newly darned for the occasion. At the last 
moment she’d mislaid the pattern of wool for knitting a 
sailor’s muffler which she meant to match in town. 

The fact is the girl had been born (like many of us) 
a mislayer of things, a leaver, a dropper, a forgetter. In 
those early days she struggled against it. . . . 

Anyhow, they were behind time. At the Junction poor 
Mrs. Verity (who suffered agonies of flurry the moment 
she left her tiny well-managed home) found herself with 
only just time to get the two third-class tickets, to snatch 
up the change, to tear over the bridge, to rattle down 
the staircase and on to No. 4 platform for the express 
up to London. The guard’s whistle was at his lips, the 
green flag in his hand. ... It was the nearest thing in 
the world! Think if the Veritys hadn’t caught that train! 
Think if that friendly porter hadn’t explained: “In you 
get, m’m! Anywhere! Get in here!” Think if he hadn’t 
bundled them into that first-class smoking carriage just 
as the train was moving out! That carriage was occu¬ 
pied, apparently, by one man, a quantity of expensive- 
looking hand baggage, and a large bundle of fur 
rugs. 

The guard banged the door to behind the Veritys. 

The train gathered speed, the white plume of steam, 
floating out past the window. Poor Mrs. Verity, flushed, 
heated, and breathless, picked herself up from that rock¬ 
like object against which she had been flung, namely, the 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


14 

shoulder of her fellow-passenger, a grim-looking man who 
should have been wearing khaki. (This was in 1916 when 
one did not expect to see anybody over eighteen or under 
thirty-five wearing anything else.) 

This man was in plain clothes particularly smartly cut, 
but not cut for him. Everything about him was that of 
the “gentleman’s gentleman”; bowler, overcoat, linen, 
knitted tie, dark trousers, boots—no, I beg his pardon; 
boot. His left boot had a thick sole, he had been in¬ 
valided out for a wound in the hip bone. 

With fury in his face he drew himself out of Mrs. 
Verity’s embrace and told her, in the severest tones that 
had ever been addressed to her, that this carriage was 
reserved, madam. 

Mrs. Verity, putting her shabby toque straight, re¬ 
plied that she knew that; that she was dreadfully sorry; 
that she had been thrown into the carriage by the guard, 
and that she and her little girl would get out at the next 
stop. 

“There won’t be one. This train,” sternly announced 
the martinet in the bowler (who had, as Mrs. Verity could 
now see, “late Sergeant-Major, Regulars” written all over 
him), “this train, madam, doesn’t stop until Victoria.” 

“Oh, dear; doesn’t it?” faltered Mrs. Verity, crushed— 
as she always was, by strangers. “I can only say I am 
dreadfully sorry—” 

“Wallace,” broke in a voice from the other end of the 
compartment. This voice, rather feeble and husky, came 
out of what Mrs. Verity in her flurry had taken for a 
stack of railway rugs and spare garments belonging to 
the irate ex-sergeant-major “Wallace!”' 


HER BEGINNINGS 


15 


The late sergeant-major replied in the voice of a chid¬ 
den child: “Sir?” 

“Hold your tongue, Wallace,” commanded the bundle 
of rugs, striving to talk loudly, “and beg the lady’s par¬ 
don at once.” 

Here little Margaret Verity burst out laughing where 
she sat. 

Margaret’s laugh was one of the prettiest sounds that 
I have ever heard. Utterly spontaneous, and so gleeful, 
so zestful! It seemed as if it would go on and on. Then, 
on a staccato note, it stopped. It stopped as though 
(suddenly as she had been amused) the child had become 
conscious that it wasn’t manners to show her amusement 
thus unrestrainedly. And now she blushed. Although 
country-bred, she had never been one of those apple¬ 
cheeked children who turn plum-faced in later life. Mar¬ 
garet’s young face was not exactly pale—that sounds un¬ 
healthy—it was smoothly, evenly uncoloured. It was like 
cream into which there has been stirred a few drops of 
fruit juice. When she blushed that creamy rose bloomed 
into an abrupt clear carmine. Most arresting, most beau¬ 
tiful. 

One does not know whether it was the sight of that ex¬ 
quisite child’s blush or the sound of her gleeful laugh 
which first caught the attention of Wallace’s master. 

He sat up; he put down the heavy fur collar, pushed 
up the peaked cloth cap he wore. He turned a sharp- 
featured fair face, the face of a quite young man, upon 
the child before him; and he demanded in that curious, 
half-simpering, half-throaty voice: 

“What were you laughing at?” 


16 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“I am sorry, I oughtn’t to have,” said little Margaret, 
the blush not yet faded. “I was laughing at you.” 

“At me?” 

“I couldn’t help it. It was so funny. I mean the way 
you said ‘Hold your tongue’ and then ‘Beg the lady’s 
pardon.’ How could he if he held his tongueV 9 

“Margaret, dear!” from Margaret’s mother. . . . 

The young man turned towards Mrs. Verity and lifted 
his cap. 

“So true,” he commented, “I apologize to everybody. 
Do you mind if I talk to you as we go up? I am bored 
with Wallace and myself. May I say I’m glad to have 
somebody else as carriage companions?” 

Mrs. Verity saw at once that he would be allowed to 
say what he liked. He was the type of young man who 
can say anything without offence. He was a sahib and 
a soldier, or had been a soldier. Poor boy, poor boy (he 
was under twenty-six) ! Every bone of his face showed 
through parchment skin. A flush burnt on those hag¬ 
gard cheeks, his blue eyes shone like jewels, the brighter 
because they had been put in ‘with smutty fingers.’ Black, 
curly lashes accentuated those feverishly bright eyes. 
The look of them, the voice, the wrappings, the concerned 
devoted soldier servant—these things Mrs. Verity was not 
too flustered to interpret. Here was a very sick man in¬ 
deed. Sick, not with wounds, but from the deadliest blow 
that war has yet learnt to smite. 

Gas! 

“Oh, please—” faltered Mrs. Verity who, as she con¬ 
fessed, never did know what to say to “any other” young 
men. 


HER BEGINNINGS 17 

Her sympathetic face spoke for her. He smiled at her, 
and added, to Margaret: “I loathe journeys; do you?” 

“I simply adore them,” breathed the child, rising to 
this. “I haven’t been for any, hardly.” 

“I have been for too many,” said the invalid. He tossed 
aside a corner of the fur rug. “I have spent half my life 
trapesing about—” 

“Mr. Charles,” put in his servant, rising, “will you keep 
yourself properly wrapped up, now?” 

“Wallace, you go to—you shut up. Don’t bully me. 
I can’t curse you above a whisper if you do. Don’t take 
advantage.” Wallace, having tucked the fur rug in, sank 
back to his place. The young gassed officer went on: 
“Well, I haven’t got many more journeys. It’s London, 
then Switzerland, this next trip.” 

“Delightful,” murmured Mrs. Verity. Margaret ex¬ 
claimed: “Switzerland? Wouldn’t it be lovely if we 
could go to Switzerland! You are lucky! Toboganning 
and bob-sleighing and skiing and skating and all those 
divine things in those books about the ‘Winter Sports’—” 

“But they’re packing me off to a sanatorium.” 

“Oh, I see. You’re going there to get well.” 

The young gassed officer shrugged his shoulders. He 
added: “And where’s your journey to?” 

“London,” exulted the child, lighting up, bouncing in 
her corner seat. “London for the whole day!” Excite¬ 
ment took her. Joyously she babbled of the Zoo, the 
lunch “out,” the theatre. “Have you been to see ‘Peter 
Pan’? Have you been to lots of matinees, then? Do you 
know that this is the first time I have been inside a thea¬ 
tre since I was born? Isn’t it glorious? I’ve been given 


18 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


a very great deal of money for a birthday present, to 
do what I liked on my twelfth birthday. This is what 
we are going to do with my five pounds.” 

In racing-high spirits, she rattled on so that Mrs. Ver¬ 
ity would not have been able to check her had she tried— 

She didn’t try. She realized. Innocent, unconscious 
chatter from this gay little creature at the beginnings of 
life came as a godsend to this sad, self-centered young 
man setting forth on his last, his hopeless journey. Poign¬ 
ant indeed was the contrast of that railway-carriage 
group. 

With all his ears he was listening, as though he drank 
in good cheer from her racing words. His eyes were fas¬ 
tened upon that vivid face opposite to him. 

As he looked at the child, so the eyes of Wallace never 
left him. 

Some time before they got to town (probably at East 
Croydon), the young man turned from the child to her 
mother. 

“Frightfully rude of me,” he apologized in that pa¬ 
thetic whisper, “not to have introduced myself. You 
will forgive the vagaries of an invalid? My name is 
Mount—Charles Mount. If you don’t mind very much 
I’ll give you my card. Good Lord, I am buried before my 
time in this mass of fur junk. Wallace, have I got a card 
on me? Produce it, will you?” Wallace produced it. 
“Look here, I am going to write down the address of that 
beastly Swiss place. Pencil, Wallace. Do you think I 
might ask you for something?” 

“Please do; if there is anything—” 

“Look here, I haven’t got anybody belonging to me. 


HER BEGINNINGS 


19 


Except Archie, mj young brother. He’s in a destroyer 
somewhere. Not a healthy job. I’ve no one to write to 
me except him. Just the two of us, and he might leave 
me behind, you never know! Letters mean a lot to a— 
to me— Do you think you could allow me to have a line 
to say how the little girl enjoys her matinee and that sort 
of thing? It would be kind. Not if it’s too much trouble, 
but ... it would be very kind.” 

What could tender-hearted Violet Verity say? She 
was emotioned by the whole incident. Tears softened her 
always soft eyes. I can imagine how her face, sweetly 
gentle under her hopeless toque, quivered at this; I can 
imagine the timid voice that promised, “Of course I’ll 
write, if you like letters. And will you write, Mr. Mount? 
and say how you—how you get to Switzerland? Here’s 
our address. Margaret shall write to you herself about 
the matinee.” 

“Will you, Margaret?” said the young man. 

“Oh, rather! I love writing letters. I’ve hardly any 
to write! I’ll write to you,” promised the child, “until 
you come home again.” 

At Victoria, of course, there was a good deal of bus^ 
tie, of handing that bundle of rugs across to another 
platform and of finding those stacks of Mr. Mount’s ex¬ 
travagant luggage. 

Mrs. Verity (eager to help, but, poor dear! perfectly 
ignorant about what to do once she left her own well- 
known milieu) waited by him while the grim-faced, 
stricken Wallace put the fear of God into every porter on 
the platform. Margaret danced in a narrow circle, like 


20 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


a terrier on a leash, watching the Christmas crowds, the 
vanloads of holly and mistletoe, the queues of soldier men 
loaded up for leave. 

Mr. Mount murmured: “You’re going to have a won¬ 
derful day with the child.” 

“Yes, I think so. I am sure she’ll enjoy it. (Why 
can’t I think of something comforting to say to this poor 
fellow?) She enjoys everything.” 

“Hope she always will. Her life ought to be roses all 
the way. Ghastly, the inevitable way one drops into 
threadbare quotation, isn’t it ?” he added, as if he and Mrs. 
Verity were at some dinner party where they had to make 
talk. “Do you happen to know those other lines— 

“ *—on Lethe’s shore 

Old Charon, leaning on his oar, waits for my pence ?’ ” 

“No. I—I am afraid I haven’t read that poem at 

all—” 

Here Wallace came hurtling back through the press. 
“Now, Mr. Charles—” 

He lifted his cap. “Not good-bye. I’ll say what 
the gladiators used to say to Caesar; do you remember?” 

Unfortunately, poor Mrs. Verity (out of her long-ago 
history classes) did remember. 

“Hail, Caesar! We, who are about to die, salute you!” 

She choked over her good-bye. But he had Margaret’s 
most joyous smile to take on his journey. 

Six weeks after that they had their last news of Charles 
Mount. 

He had died at that sanatorium place in Switzerland, 
and he had left his very considerable fortune to Miss 


HER BEGINNINGS 


21 


Margaret Verity “in gratitude for a friendship which 
had greatly cheered the last part of his life.” 

One of those gigantic swollen fortunes of the war, 
made out of tinned foods or shoe leather or gramophone 
records—something that the soldiers had to have in 
masses!—had been made by the firm of Mount & Sons. 
The father had not lived to see it, the profits were divided 
between the two sons, and now the elder, Charles, left his 
to Miss Verity, free of legacies! Everything was to 
come to the child at once, without any tiresome trustee¬ 
ships or tyings-up until she should be twenty-one. Young 
Archie Mount in the destroyer had his own money. He 
got the family portraits, his mother’s jewelry and personal 
belongings. Everything else was to belong to this little 
stranger whom Charles had seen once, and from whom 
he had received perhaps half a dozen letters. 

Imagine it. . . . Reams came to me from her mother 
to tell me of this wonderful good fortune. Wasn’t it 
splendid that Margaret would not have to grow up tram¬ 
melled and suppressed by the want of the money I After 
all, the darling was to have every opportunity—educa¬ 
tion! foreign travel! charming surroundings! She would 
get to know crowds of the nicest people! would make a 
circle of delightful friends! 

In fact, life was to be roses all the way for this child 
of twelve. 


6 

Nine years later I saw her again. 
I must say it was a shock. 


CHAPTER II 


TEA IN THE PADDED FOOM 

1 

I N November I went to call on Mrs. Verity at her 
London house. 

This was in Hill Street. One of the tall, ex¬ 
clusive, discreet-looking small houses of which the front 
door is as ceremonious as the moulded lid of some quattro¬ 
cento casket. What a change from the Veritys’ last 
front door; the ever-open, honeysuckle-garlanded porch 
of the cottage looking forth across the windy Downs to 
the sea! Mrs. Verity’s note told me Margaret had bought 
this Hill Street house just as it stood, as the furniture 
appealed to her, and that she would presently “add 
touches” of her own. 

A butler with the face of a dyspeptic Sphinx showed 
me up the mysteriously dim, heavily carpeted staircase 
into the drawing-room. . . . Heavens, what a surprise! 
How unlike the Veritys! 

How unlike their cottage living-room’s homely white 
distemper, its bright rose chintz, its lattice windows flung 
open wide to the sea breeze and the breath of sweet peas 
and pinks from the garden. 

I gazed about this new place. Walls, sombrely and 
richly gilded, were almost hidden by draperies of marvel- 

22 


TEA IN THE PADDED ROOM 


23 


lous embroideries, by cabinets of costliest Chinese lacquer, 
black and gold, and by the dim-red panels of a great 
screen sprawled over by dragons. Tall lamps stood in 
corners under weirdly coloured pagoda shades; upon 
carven stands or joss tables squatted other lamps, in the 
shape of monkeys, of couchant monster frogs. On the 
black carpet that you sank into up to you knees there 
were crowded bed-like divans, divan-like chairs, pouffes, 
tasselled floor cushions—all covered in brocade: gold, 
black, and a touch of dragon’s-blood scarlet. Heavily 
drooping curtains of that gold-and-black brocade framed 
the windows, which had inner curtains and half-blinds of 
golden net. Tables of inlay showed a scatter of fashion 
papers ( Eve , Vogue , The Tatler , La Vie Parisienne ), 
magazines, new novels; also a huge box of chocolates, up¬ 
setting its contents and drifts of white packing shavings 
over the hearthrug, also a flung-down new doll, one of 
these new grotesques as big as a child of three, dressed 
as a young man in evening clothes with a wig of pale- 
gold silk. The whole room, I thought, represented some 
interior decorator’s dream of a voluptuous lap of luxury. 

Tastes differ. To me it gave a stifling, padded-room 
feeling. I called it dark. 

It was full of flowers! Man-high vases of trumpet 
lilies; a brazen stand full of tubs of forced lilac; many 
bowls of Roman hyacinth, growing in fibre. Somewhere 
there smouldered one of the joss sticks which one finds 
alight in a clairvoyant’s lair. On a heavily carved 
pedestal, one of those perfume-burning lamps was in full 
blast. And, over all these mingling scents, there brooded 
the atmosphere of a shut-up room in which people heavily, 


24 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


thoroughly, and incessantly smoked ... an Oriental, 
languorous warmth was meant, I fancy. . . . 

Tastes differ. I called it stuffy. 

Altogether the very last atmosphere which I had ex¬ 
pected to find surrounding that open-air Englishwoman, 
Mrs. Verity! 

She came in. 


2 

“And what about your girl?” I asked presently. “I 
long to see Margaret again; is she well?” 

“Oh, yes! She’s quite well . . . really—” 

Instantly there flashed upon me the suspicion that all 
was not well with the child. The word “really” tacked 
on, in that tone, to any sentence, is enough to contradict 
it. Also there was something in Mrs. Verity’s expression. 
The first glance found her unchanged; even though she 
was wearing (for the first time since I’d known her) a 
“good” frock and shoes that matched it. Her figure 
was erect, her gentle face wholesomely pink as ever, her 
eyes as clear. But there was something in her expression. 
That touch of wistfulness there had always been. Now 
there was a touch of uneasiness as well. Was she talking 
to hide it? 

“Of course, you know, Margaret has grown , very fast. 
It takes girls some years to get over that. . . . 6 As lovely 
as she promised to be?’ Ah, she is very pretty. You’ll 
see. I don’t think this just because I am her mother,” 
Mrs. Verity told me with eager, defensive pride. “So 
many people admire her enormously. Everywhere we’ve 


25 


TEA IN THE PADDED ROOM 

been. Everybody asks who she is and invites her and 
makes much of her. The darling is so much sought 
after! So many admirers l” 

“Not engaged yet?” 

Here the telephone bell let off its trill, deadened by 
the padding and upholstering of the perfumed tea-cosy 
of a room. 

“Forgive me.” Mrs. Verity turned to the pompadour- 
dressed doll that camouflaged the telephone. “Yes? . . . 
Oh, how do you do, Eric? No! I’m sorry, Margaret’s 
not in . . . gone to the races with Claude Oddley and 
the others. . . . Oh, did she? . . . I’m afraid she must 
have forgotten she promised. How naughty of her! 
This evening she is going with a party to the ‘Nine o’clock 
Revue.’ . . . Back in about half an hour, I hope. . . . 
Well, come in to tea and tell her. Will you? . . . 
Do . . . Good-bye.” 

She turned back to answer my question. 

“Oh, no; Margaret isn’t engaged. Just these crowds 
of admirers. ... A positive guard of honour always. 
Far more young men than girls would ever have wanted , 
when we were girls—” 

“You mean far more young men at a time?” 

“Ah, well! Personally I never wanted more than the 
one man ever. I was always ‘a hopelessly obsolete 
romantic’ as the darling calls me. But Margaret must 
have her bodyguard. They take her out to dances and 
theatres and race meetings and Lord’s and the boat race 
and Hurlingham and everything that’s going. ... I 
hear it’s the modern way for young men to afficher them¬ 
selves with the prettiest girls, but that they aren’t 


26 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


proposing any more? We don’t notice that. They con¬ 
stantly propose to Margaret,” smiled the mother, so 
touchingly that I hadn’t the heart even to think how 
unlikely it was that the heiress to the Mount money 
should lack proposals. “One of them, especially, is ab¬ 
solutely the darling’s slave . This, between ourselves . . . 
but you’d see, anyhow. It’s he who has taken her to the 
steepleschasing to-day. Devoted to her! Do you know 
him? You probably know of him? He’s just come into 
the title. It’s young Lord Oddley.” 

Her gentle voice took on the very slightest note of im¬ 
portance. She was the least snobbish creature in this 
world, but in a woman of her upbringing a title (and a 
very old and honourable title at that) cannot fail to 
arouse a certain thrill. 

“Is Margaret fond of him?” 

“So difficult to say, isn’t it, with girls?” 

Secretly I thought it had been easy enough to “say” 
with some girls. Printed on Violet’s face at her first 
meeting with Jack Verity must have been the dumb con¬ 
fession that she was his, and his alone. There had been 
the true romance. I wondered if it were to come for Jack 
Verity’s daughter and this young Lord Oddley? Mild 
excitement pervaded me at the thought of seeing for my¬ 
self. I am, I admit, a mass of enthusiastic curiosity. 
I prepared to meet romance, even in this rather over¬ 
furnished setting. 

“Do tell me about this. How long has your girl known 
the young man? Where did you meet him?” 

“In Switzerland, at the ‘Winter Sports’ about two years 
ago. He and his sister Cynthia were at our hotel. 


TEA IN THE PADDED ROOM 


27 


Cynthia is Margaret’s very great friend, just now. 
Cynthia found this house for her. Insisted upon Mar¬ 
garet’s buying it—” 

(Ah! Did “Cynthia” account for the un-Verity-like 
furniture?) 

“—Cynthia’s taste is marvellous, Margaret says. She 
seems to amuse Margaret always—she—” 

Here, again, the telephone bell. 

“So sorry; may I? Do you know, this goes on from 
morning until night for Margaret!” She took up the 
receiver. “Yes? No; this is Mrs. Verity speaking . . . 
No. She is not back yet ... I expect them back at 
any moment. Can I give any message? . . . Oh, you 
will come round? Yes; do” (less enthusiastically, I 
thought). “Come in to tea. Good-bye. . . . That was 
Cynthia speaking. ... I suppose I’d better let Benson 
know that there will be crowds of people here for tea in 
a minute. . . .” She rang. 

When the dyspeptic Sphinx (of whom Mrs. Verity was 
obviously in grave terror) had taken her tremulous order 
and had disappeared, I asked: “Would you like it?” 

“What?” 

“For Margaret to accept this young man.” 

“Oh,” hesitated Mrs. Verity. 

I was expecting her to utter the cliche peculiar to 
that type of gentle sentimentalist (such as, “Of course, 
if the dear child loves him I should not dream of being 
selfish and of standing in the way of her getting married 
as soon as she likes”), when Mrs. Verity remarked with 
a tinge of bitterness: “It won’t make much difference 
whether I like it or—” 


28 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Here came another interruption; sounds of a sudden, 
violent commotion assaulted that restrained house. 

Outside it, there were motor noises; then a slam of the 
front door, barking, laughter, shrill cries, several people 
seemed to be falling upstairs at once. The door opened. 
There entered helter-skelter—how many people the be¬ 
wildered eye could not at first take in: a mob of tall, 
glossily brushed youths following a very tall girl in a 
leather motoring coat and a small, scarlet suede hat. The 
mob seemed to be jostling one another in joyous horse¬ 
play as they came, to trip over each other’s heels and 
over the madly excited dogs that leapt in arabesques about 
their legs, and to babble all at once in a manner that 
reminded one of several gramophone records put on simul¬ 
taneously and much too fast. One seemed to hear: 

“—poisonous luck wah’n’t it poisonous. Luck my dear 
man how can you say hullo here’s Eric hullo Eric! Hullo 
Odds ! poisonous luck, when you backed—laughed so much 
back hundred to eight in the finals won’t have any tea but 
I’d love a drink! Well? Well? ‘Exasperation’ first AND 
after all that bubbly at lunch Paddock enclosure ‘exasper¬ 
ation’ first ‘Tiara’ second ‘This Freedom’ eighth or some¬ 
thing perfect floats of people in that Armstrong Siddeley 
‘Tiara’ second? What? Going to put a fiver on her and 
DOWN Mixy! DOWN changed my Three doubles at 
HulZo Eric had an EARTHLY ‘Exasperation’ first poi¬ 
sonous luck oh, NO! she DIDN’T had you anything on 
Ah! how do you do Mrs. Verity did it well under an hour 
and forty just my luck I—” 

The noise they made almost swamped the voice of Mrs. 
Verity saying, “Here she is. This is Margaret.” 


TEA IN THE PADDED ROOM 


29 


3 

I found myself shaking hands with the tall girl, looking 
up into her face. 

It was an arrestingly pretty little face; oval, big-eyed, 
with a mouth of petulant and flowerlike curves. Only— 
too pale, too fine-drawn. Too thickly powdered, and 
those great eyes, grey-blue as English summer skies, 
seemed to have lost softness. Was it because their fringe 
of brown had been caked with heaviest eyelash black ? 

“Hah do you do?” she greeted me languidly. “Of 
course I remember you. At the cottage. Cent -uries 
ago. . . .” She put up her hands to her furs, to her 
manifold layers of leather, cloth, tricot. One by one she 
peeled them off, while the bodyguard hovered making 
abortive efforts to help: “Can’t / do that?” “Let me, 
Margaret.” “Here, let me help you off with it—” 

She didn’t look at any of them. She remarked care¬ 
lessly, “Here, Odds. Catch!” and threw the bundle 
literally in the face of a wispy youth of about twenty- 
one, with swept-back gilt hair and a mimosa-yellow waist¬ 
coat. He staggered under the impact of the bundle of 
wraps, caught them, laid them down on one of the pouffes, 
and continued to hover at Margaret’s elbow. When she 
dropped into the divan-like chair nearest to the fire, ex¬ 
claiming, “It’s bitterly cold; wish we could keep this room 
cosier!” this youth subsided onto the floor cushion at 
her feet, his eyes glued to her face, his mouth slightly 
open as if to catch each word she let fall. 

This, I guessed, was her slave, Claude Oddley. 

I just saw that he was rather like that gilt-wigged 


30 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


dressmaker’s doll (that some one had now picked up off 
the table and had flung on the top of the piano where 
he sprawled his limp length). For the moment I couldn’t 
spare young Oddley another glance. 

I must look at Margaret as she lounged full length, 
exquisite head buried back in the cushions, endless, flesh- 
silk-stockinged, stick-like legs crossed and stretched out 
far beyond the skirt of her brown silk knitted frock. It 
hung on her as the flag hangs on the staff when there isn’t 
a breeze. What, what had happened to that harmoniously 
sturdy young body which had reminded me of the polished 
corners of the Temple? What of those limbs which were 
rounded and smooth as the base of an elephant’s tusk? 
Dwindled and shrunk to this? Curious words to have to 
use of a girl only at the end of her teens! But why was 
she withering? Yes, that was the effect of her. A bud, 
withering just when it should be swelling into proudest 
bloom. Tastes differ. I suppose she “looked right” to 
that admiring bodyguard of hers? 

These filled that padded room to oppression with them¬ 
selves, their dogs (two rough-haired terriers and a bull¬ 
dog), their thick, circling gales of tobacco smoke, their 
field glasses, their litter of sporting papers, their gramo¬ 
phone-record-like babel of racing odds, motor shop, 
Christian- and nick-names. 

In a few moments, too, the place was further littered 
by larger quantities of cigarette debris than I have be¬ 
fore seen. Ash lay in drifts on the carpet; ash between 
brocade cushions; ash in saucers; ash and smoking “ends” 
mingling with dregs of tea at bottoms of cups; ash on the 
Queen Anne silver tea tray; ash among the sugar; burnt- 


TEA IN THE PADDED ROOM 


31 


out matches in the fibre for the hyacinths; ash dropped 
into Margaret’s brown silken lap; ash powdered the coats 
of the dozing dogs; ash on the fender stool; ash—yes, if 
you’ll believe me, I observed some ash even in the ash 
trays. 

To return to the bodyguard. These fell over each 
other to attend to Margaret with matches and with 
cigarettes—“Here, try one o’ mine—” “No! Margaret 
won’t touch anything but those heavily doped brutes she 
and Cynthia buy from that ghastly little Greek in—” 
They plied her with tea and cakes, the late Star, her 
racing card and beaded bag that she’d left in the car. 

Which of these obviously enslaved youths was the 
favourite? 

Interesting to speculate. Was she going to encourage 
the last of the Oddleys? She took no more notice of him 
than she did of the giant doll he was so like; seemed, in¬ 
deed, to have more to say to “Eric,” the red-haired under¬ 
graduate with the “taking” smile, pretty voice, and beau¬ 
tiful socks. I wondered if Eric spelt romance? 

“You promised me,” Eric was reproaching her. “Ten 
days ago you promised me you’d dance to-night. At the 
Embassy—” 

“Well, I must have forgotten to put it down. All I 
remember is telling Odds I’d join his party foj- ths Little 
Theatre. Better fight it out between you.” 

Oh, she was queening it. But she held herself, I 
thought, rather unqueenly. Or was that just the fash¬ 
ionable debutante slouch that showed her so roundbacked, 
so coffin-chested, with collarbones upon which one could 
hang a hat? 


32 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


She had hung upon them a very beautiful pearl string 
with a diamond clasp. Her other jewellery was the arrow 
of diamonds in her hat, a wrist-watch on a narrow black 
ribbon crusted with gems, and a long platinum chain, on 
which was slung a jingling collection of what her father 
would have called “gadgets.” There was a god of green 
jade, a gold-framed pocket mirror, a tiny gold vanity 
case, a case for cigarettes, a pencil, a lipstick in a jade- 
and-nacre tube. 

Mechanically she took up the mirror, made a little 
moue, turned to the lipstick and began to outline in vivid 
carmine the pale, petal curve of her upper lip. “What’s 
good for spots?” she asked fractiously. “I have another 
beastly spot coming just there; can’t think why, can you, 
Violet?” (to her mother). 

“No, I can’t, darling. ... I never got them when I 
was your age, I don’t now.” 

“No, you never have any worries. You aren’t like me, 
Vi. You hadn’t grown so fast,” Margaret explained, 
looking critically upon her mother. “You hadn’t any¬ 
thing to do in your time. . . .You didn’t wake up every 
morning feeling so absolutely mouldy.” 

“Mouldy?” took up Mrs. Verity in quick concern; 
“what do you mean by ‘mouldy,’ darling?” 

Chorus of young things who had come in the car: 

“Ha! don’t you know what mouldy is, Mrs. Verity? 
I get that mouldy feeling every morning of my life; don’t 
you, Odds?” 

“I take any bet that I feel mouldier than any of you. 
I wake up feeling like death,” enlarged young Oddley. 
“Feeling like death. When my blighter comes in with my 


TEA IN THE PADDED ROOM 


33 


early tea, it’s all I can do not to hurl it at his head. 
Fact.” “Tea’s all right. It’s the mere mention of any¬ 
thing to eat," groaned the youth with the bulldog. 

“I don’t begin to live,” added the boy who was drinking 
brandy and soda instead of tea, “until one o’clock.” 

“You’re alive by one o’clock?” exclaimed a pallid Adonis 
with a Guard’s tie. “Half-past one is my very earliest. 
At two, I do begin to sit up and take some faint notice. 
By four I feel rather better, thanks. By six, one starts 
to spend the day. How any one can exist pr^-lunch I 
don’t know. Every day, in every respect I, personally, 
get mouldier and mouldier.” 

One knew it was a pose, but scarcely a pretty one. 

Worse; if you take the hideous word “mouldy” as 
meaning “not quite fresh,” it was not entirely inappro¬ 
priate ! 

This whole group of young people. . . . Difficult to see 
them just now; when the tea had come in the heavy cur¬ 
tains had been drawn, the lights switched on behind the 
shades of dim, petunia-purple and deep rose colour. It 
was darkness made rosily visible, but I had taken stock 
of the bodyguard in the daylight. 

Now, please realize! this post-war bodyguard was of 
fundamentally decent boys (even Lord Oddley, though a 
fool, was “nice”). Nice-looking, too, all of them. 

Each generation of women thinks that the partners of 
their youth represent the golden age of manly beauty. 
“Look,” urge matrons, “at these photographs of Dick, 
Tom and Harry when they were young men of the age 
of Margaret’s bodyguard. Doesn’t it show you—” 

Groups, taken at Sandhurst, Woolwich, or on a ship; 


34 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


football groups; tennis-playing groups of heavily mous¬ 
tached young men of the eighteen eighties or nineties. 
Crews of boats, at Henley’s long pre-war! One looks 
. . . and one shakes one’s head. So heavy; so stolid; 
so hairy. And ah, how lumpily clad were the men who, 
now in their thirties and forties, were then in their teens 
or twenties! 

In many respects the lads of to-day are vastly better¬ 
looking than those of the yesterday to which Jack Verity 
belonged. 

Partly, of course, it is the infinitely more becoming cut 
of their clothes. But the body is more than raiment. 
Their build, poise and movement are better. They are 
more graceful, more supple, more pliant. Their physical 
exercises have been on better lines than those of Sandow’s 
pupils in King Edward’s reign. Ponderous “apparatus” 
has been done away with. You don’t see now those over- 
muscular or muscle-bound bulky shapes (as regretted 
by fathers and uncles: “Never meet a decent-looking, 
well set-up young fellow nowadays. Women! That’s what 
they are getting like.”). More sophistically groomed 
are they than the nineteenth century blood. Quicker in 
the glance, quicker (I think!) at the uptake. Their 
hands, hair and teeth receive more passionately single- 
aimed attention. 

But—in other respects, hasn’t their health been allowed 
to go ? 

Curiously pasty-faced were these young men in at¬ 
tendance on Violet’s girl. Townyfied, indoorish-looking in 
spite of the fact that they had just motored up from 
the country (adopting, as drivers, the motto, “Safety 


TEA IN THE PADDED ROOM 


35 


last”). Sallow, all of them. Their eyes—most of them— 
had that dull, strained, puffy-around-the-lids look which 
comes from too few hours’ sleep in the twenty-four. 

This is an underslept generation. Which of them 
thinks of any sleep till dawn? Underslept, underwalked. 
Which of them goes for an afternoon’s tramp in the rain? 
(“Walk? WALK? But my new ‘Indian X’ gets me there 
in six and a half minutes . . . bzzzzuppl”) Under¬ 
walked, but overdanced. Overmotored. Overtennised. 
Over-Ruggered. Over-Ritzed! (At least this section of 
it was.) Certainly oversmoked. (Incessantly they 
lighted one cigarette from another.) Overstimulated. 
Cramming into twenty-four hours the activities that would 
have sufficed for one month in the life of the young Jack 
Verity; and making plans for further activities weeks 
ahead. . . . 

Some of this bodyguard doubtless had professions. 
Some were in business. Or they had regimental duties, 
or had to read for exams which meant the beginning of 
their career. Oh, they had real work to do. I know 
this type of modern. They work hard. But—perish 
the thought that they should play less than those who 
have no other occupation in the world than to amuse 
themselves! Those who must work live at double pressure, 
that’s all. 

I thought: “Well, if they enjoy it!” The boys (splen¬ 
did material abused, but of stronger fibre than the girl) 
did apparently enjoy their lives. But Margaret? The 
girl? What was she getting out of this scurry and 
rush? 

Cigarette holder in one hand, Martini in the other, 


36 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


there she lounged. ... I watched the lovely, fatigued, 
blank little face. 

I saw why her mother was growing that anxious look. 

The Sphinx announced: “Miss Oddley.” 

4 

So here was another factor in Margaret’s life: Mar¬ 
garet’s best girl friend. 

As she appeared round the screen my eye was caught 
first by her boots. They were of white suede, rucked 
high up the leg. Then came a rough white frieze skirt. 
Then an insolently cut coat of sap-green leather with a 
high collar. Above this appeared a sharp-featured profile 
not unlike her brother’s, a many-jointed sap-green ciga¬ 
rette holder, and a sap-green leather cap. Between the 
cigarette holder and the cap appeared the glint of a mon¬ 
ocle also lightly tinted green. 

The wearer of these peculiarities dashed up to Margaret 
Verity, and for one moment, removing the cigarette holder 
(which was almost long enough to have been left in the 
umbrella stand), kissed the girl fondly on both cheeks 
before taking any notice of Mrs. Verity, and exclaimed: 
“Peggy, why didn’t you ring up? I have been panting 
to know for certain about this show on the twenty- 
second.” 

“Oh, that’s all right, Cynthia,” broke in Claude Oddley 
from his seat on the floor cushion; “that’s arranged. I’m 
to pick up Margaret, she’s dining with me, and I’m bring¬ 
ing her along to the excitement afterwards.” 

“Oh, lovely! Claude displaying a little intelligence for 


TEA IN THE PADDED ROOM 


37 


once. This is because His Nibs is now of age, I suppose? 
You know it was his birthday on Wednesday. I made 
him celebrate it in bills. Paying them, I mean. Wasn't 
it a brilliant brainwave?” rattled on Miss Oddley, pushing 
her brother off that floor cushion onto the already heavily 
littered carpet, and taking his seat. Even while she 
talked nonsense her eyes were the most alertly calculating 
that I have seen in any young woman’s head; her brother 
might be the heir, but it was obviously she who ruled 
him. “There we sat in the book room at the Half Moon 
Street place, up to the ceiling in correspondence! Bills 
all around us, cheque books, trustees and a stray cousin 
or so, and I invented quite a good game for Claude to 
play with the other people. He’d hold up a bill in its 
envelope and say, ‘Guess how much this is for?—from 
my bootmaker (or my shirt man or my hairdresser or 
whoever it was)—and it’s spread from my last term at 
Eton (or whenever it was) until now. Guess how much 
it is for, and you can have the amount if you guess shil¬ 
lings and all right. Besides my paying it.’ ” 

“Did anybody guess, Cynthia?” demanded Margaret. 
The first trace of a smile had appeared upon her face. 
Yes, she was evidently amused. The swift rattle of this 
older, livelier girl seemed to have a vitalizing effect upon 
her. She looked a languid, princess listening to the fool¬ 
ing of her paid jester. 

“Yes, I did. I guessed a bill from Lobb’s to the very 
shilling. And why ? Because I had opened it by mistake 
the last time it came saying they were reluctantly com¬ 
pelled. ... So I got the whole one hundred thirty-seven 
pounds, fourteen shillings and eightpence. Not too bad. 


38 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Pity I went and put it all on ‘This Freedom’ who came 
in seventh. Do you know, I very nearly put it on ‘Tiara,’ 
wasn’t it maddening? However, there were my bills at 
Wooland’s, and Deb’s and Reville’s and my beauty place; 
Claude stumped up for all those. Happy little family 
birthday party that. But of course the real celebrations 
are on the twenty-second. It will be lovely, Peggy. Are 
you going to wear your new Egyptian?” 

Here .Mrs. Verity (who, by the way, had not yet been 
greeted by Miss Oddley, of whom she was obviously in 
awe) interposed from behind the teapot: “Cynthia dear, 
I don’t want to interfere. . . . Margaret darling, when 
you said the twenty-second, you don’t mean Wednesday 
week?” 

“Yes, it is next Wednesday week. Why? Oh, Violet, 
don’t be tiresome and say there is anything else on?” 

“My pet, there certainly is. Have you forgotten? I’m 
afraid it is very important. Your Uncle Tom is expected 
to land from South America on the twenty-first. After 
more than ten years. And you know, dear, his first night 
in London he must dine with us. I am afraid we couldn’t 
possibly—” 

“Oh, what a cruel blow! This simply cannot be borne,” 
exclaimed the monocled girl. “It’s not only the dance 
but—” She exchanged with her brother a look that 
seemed to speak of countless plans. “It’s all been ar¬ 
ranged for, Mrs. Verity! If Peggy does not turn up it 
all crashes and crumbles! Oh, it’s not to be thought of. 
You can’t ruin the whole show for some beavered old 
gentleman who turns up from the back of beyond like 


TEA IN THE PADDED ROOM 


39 


Rip Van Winkle. If he’s waited all these years he can 
wait one more night.” 

“Cynthia, I am really sorry, but I am afraid—” 

“Uncles will do any time,” decreed Miss Oddley, “but 
we can’t have our special little party. Something has 
got to be evolved; something must. Why not bring Uncle 
Tom? We can push him off to bye-byes afterwards, be¬ 
fore things become not quite suitable for him.” 

“Yes, why not?” put in young Lord Oddley; “if he’s 
set his mind on dining with Margaret—well, let him! 
That’s all right. Let him dine with Margaret and every¬ 
body else. Make it the Ritz. You’ll all come along, 
won’t you, everybody here?” He turned his dollish gilt 
head from one side to another of the crowd in the smoth¬ 
ering sachet of a room. 

“That will make it all right, Mrs. Verity, won’t it?” 

Poor Mrs. Verity evidently considered it would be any¬ 
thing but all right. 

Her Uncle Tom? The kind old friend of her cottage 
days ? Arriving in England for the first time in ten years, 
and finding himself a guest, not at a homely little family 
reunion, but at a Ritzian orgy of a score at least of the 
modern young? A banquet the young host of which he 
would never before have seen and the hostess of which . . . 
What would he make of Miss Monocle? 

All these thoughts I could read, even in the roseate 
gloom, passing behind the face of my old friend. It be¬ 
came increasingly anxious. I believe, now, that already 
on that afternoon Mrs. Verity knew that she was ap¬ 
proaching the end of her tether. 


40 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Margaret, pulling herself out of her divan, made her 
way through the cigarette smoke that wavered and closed 
behind her like a river current. She perched her bony 
young frame on the wide arm of her mother’s chair. 

“Vi dear,” she said plaintively, “you’ve got to manage 
this. I really cannot face this heavy family life stunt of 
this heavy family dinner with Uncle Tom. Either you 
must have him here all to yourself, a deux —” 

“My pet, it’s you he wants to see. He hasn’t seen 
you, he says, since you were a tiny girl in a navy-blue—” 

“Oh, Violet, spare us!” 

“How shrieking; the idea of Margaret, tiny, and in 
navy blue! Hadn’t the dear old gentleman better keep 
his memories undisturbed by Margaret in her new 
Egyptian ?” 

“Vi, if you won’t have him alone, you must make him 
come to Claude and Cynthia’s party at the Ritz.” 

“ ‘Yes, he goes to the Ritz, 

Where he sits and sits. 

That’s why they call him Vamping Tom!’ ” 

sang another young man. Gales of laughter greeted this 
effort. In the hubbub I saw Margaret steal her lean 
young arm about her mother’s neck and whisper frenziedly 
through clouds of her own cigarette smoke; begging in 
the manner of one who has only to command. I wondered 
what arrangement would be come to about that party? 


TEA IN THE PADDED ROOM 


41 


5 

Presently that arrangement was announced. 

Uncle Tom’s home-welcoming was to take place at the 
Ritz. Everybody was to come. I found myself included. 
As curiosity remains the keynote of my being, I accepted. 
Everybody was to come, but it was to be Margaret’s 
party. All of us, including Uncle Tom, were to be Mar¬ 
garet’s guests. 

“And you,” added Mrs. Verity to a young man who 
had been sitting close beside her with his back to the 
lamp so that I got his head only as a black blot against 
a dimly purple disc. “You’ll come?” 

“Thank you so much; I shall be delighted.” 

“And you, Eric,” Margaret was commanding, “and 
Stumpy and Freckles and Prince. Well, thank heavens 
I shall at least have my friends about me to help me to 
live through my relations . That’s one small mercy, isn’t 
it, Cynthia?” 

Cynthia Oddley, I noticed, had not looked too pleased 
with the arrangement. She turned her sharp profile to¬ 
wards the brother who was a less intelligent version of 
herself, and I heard her mutter something to him about 
“a fearful curse. . . . What about afterwards? . . . 
have to say you’re driving her home—” 

“And bring her along?” muttered the brother. 

“Obviously bring her along.” 

“Even then, they will wonder why—” 

“Oh, Claude, don’t be such a goddam fool about every¬ 
thing. Time to think things out before then, won’t 
there? . . . Shut up, can’t you,” whispered the sister 


42 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


between her teeth. I got the green glint of that monocle 
flashed suspiciously upon me. Something in the look of 
the unmonocled eye I liked no better. Already, indeed, 
that girl gave me a feeling of discomfort. Already I 
knew that she knew that I had caught that word “after¬ 
wards,” and had wondered what it meant. 

Without reason, there flashed upon me then and there 
an impression of this girl friend of Margaret. Cynthia 
Oddley, young as she was, seemed to me to have a look 
of one other person whom I had known. This other 
person had slipped into the grip of a repellent habit. 
This other person had begun by flirting with drugs, ex¬ 
perimentalizing with this narcotic and that stimulant. 
This person had ended up as the loser in a particularly 
horrible struggle. 

Details of that struggle began to crowd in upon my 
memory. 

But they were details I had had to make myself forget. 

I dismissed them now. It was too wild a thought, must 
be a trick of my own imagination! 

I took my leave and went downstairs; followed by one 
of the other callers—the young man who had been sitting 
with his back to the light. 


6 

Outside, there was a bit of a November fog on. 

But heavens! how fresh it felt, in comparison. What 
a relief to get out into it, after that stifling den I had 
left, thick with scent and smoke, tea, cocktails, bril- 


TEA IN THE PADDED ROOM 43 

liantine, Oriental draperies, face powder, bull terrier, 
hyacinths and humanity mingled! 

What a relief, too, after that babel of contradictious 
chatter, to find oneself answering the pleasant voice of 
one quite different young man! 

I hadn’t caught his name. Was he one of Margaret’s 
bodyguard? He seemed older. He seemed, as I say, 
different. 

Quite a modern! He had the clothes, the waisty figure, 
the haircut of the others. But he had not joined in the 
“mouldy” competition, or in the contest as to which of 
them had been in bed for the fewest hours during the last 
eighteen months. He had only talked a little, and that 
quite casually, about the races. Not that I caught if 
he had been to the races with the others. I didn’t see his 
face until we got into the street. He carried an overcoat, 
but I noticed that, although it was a cold day, he did 
not put it on. 

All about him there was something I now realize as an 
open-air effect. He suggested open spaces, wind, freshly 
moving waters and (unless this were one’s imagination) a 
fearless frankness of mind. 

He was a big young man, but he moved lightly and 
well, as do so many of these well-proportioned heavy¬ 
weights. 

“Are you going my way?” he asked. 

His manner was friendly and pleasant. “Good. May 
I walk along with you ? What time do you make it ? Ah l 
Then I shall just catch the jeweller’s before they close. 
As he walked he confided to me that he had to go and 


44 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


see about a ring. He smiled a little, adding, pleasantly: 
“Yes; it is an engagement ring, if you were going to ask 
that. But, no; it isn’t to choose one. The fact is my 
fiancee has dropped a stone out of hers and I want to 
see if they can match it.” 

So he was engaged? 

I found myself wondering, in the idle way one does 
wonder, what the fiancee was like; if she were a pretty 
girl? She was quite a lucky one, I thought. This was 
a most pleasant young man. I judged him to be about 
nine and twenty. In the lights of the street lamps as 
we passed he seemed clean-featured, and for colouring 
what I have heard described as “the false dark.” For, 
though his hair was almost as black as his tie and though 
his brows were dark and thick, his skin, instead of being 
appropriately swarthy to go with that very dark hair, 
was light and slightly freckled. Also, when he looked 
straight at you it was obvious even by artificial light 
that his eyes were, normally, of the purest blue. Possibly 
you think that such details could not become apparent 
during a seven minutes’ walk along a London street at 
twenty minutes to six of a November evening? Ah! A 
man reader then? As a woman, one naturally noticed 
all these trivialities that I have mentioned; together with 
several others, such as his lack of fuss over the stone lost 
from that ring. Many people might have been super¬ 
stitious about that mishap. I noticed, too, something 
vaguely of the sea about his whole bearing. 

I wondered if he had known Captain Verity? Presently 
I asked him this. He told me: “No, I never met him. 


TEA IN THE PADDED ROOM 45 

Never met any of them before. It was my brother, the 
soldier, who met them. My name’s Mount.” 

“Ah!” I said, suddenly realizing that he must be the 
brother of that young man who had travelled with the 
Veritys on that fateful journey between Lewes and 
London. 

He told me: “I’ve been abroad. I hadn’t seen any of 
the family. Except the old man. That’s their uncle 
Tom that we are all supposed to be dining with on the 
twenty-second. I ran across him in Argentina once. Oh, 
I have had reams of correspondence, of course, with Mrs. 
Verity. That’s a charming woman.” 

I said something conventional about her being an old 
friend whom I had not seen for a number of years. 

Young Mount replied: “Then you haven’t seen the 
girl since she was grown up.” 

“Margaret? No, I haven’t seen her since she was 
grown up.” 

He flashed a sidewards look at me, as if to probe with 
those blue eyes what I thought of the girl, of her house, 
of her manner, of her associates, of the plan for the dinner 
on the twenty-second, and of the situation generally. 

Obviously he saw what I thought. 

He gave a little upward fling of his chin. I think there 
must have been the flicker of a smile, but we weren’t pass¬ 
ing a street lamp just then, so I cannot be sure. 

He said only: “So that’s Margaret Verity. What a 
mess!” 


CHAPTER III 


DINNER AT THE RITZ 


1 


D INNER at the Ritz meant a series of surprises— 
but not those for which I was prepared. 

I had anticipated a devastating reaction of 
Margaret and Co. upon Mr. Lloyd-Rip Van Winkle. I 
didn’t foresee the setback provided by Rip Van Winkle 
himself. 

He said none of the expected things about being all 
at sea in this modern Babylon that seemed like another 
world to an old-fashioned duffer like him. . . . 

His first quietly uttered contribution was: “The Ritz, 
eh? I gathered the Ritz wasn’t so amusing just now? 
These places vary so month by month, I am given to 
understand? One week, they tell me, Claridge’s is the only 
restaurant. Then you don’t meet another human being 
there. All at the Berkeley. Surely some of these young 
people want to dance? Then why aren’t we at the Em¬ 
bassy? Surely some of them belong? Well, as you have 
made all arrangements now, Violet my dear, why not dine 
at the Ritz and go on to dance somewhere alive?” 

Not bad, was it, for a so-called beaver from the back- 
woods? To look at he was pleasantly keen-featured, 
sunburnt to a rich chestnut brown, and clean-shaven. 
Not a hair on his face. Plenty on his head—a massive, 

46 


DINNER AT THE RITZ 


47 


shapely head, covered by that inordinate mass of white 
hair, strong, bushy,' crisp as lichen. Closer-growing 
patches of lichen formed his eyebrows. Under these 
twinkled bright eyes as of a boy who is sailing his first 
model yacht. His actual age was an active, vigorous 
sixty-three and the business which had kept him so long 
in South America had to do with shipping: I believe I 
caught the word “intercoastal.” 

(Here I apologize for being femininely vague. The 
“business” side of men I can only give in terms which I 
have heard them use. Generally I have forgotten. So 
I may misquote. Presently, perhaps all women will be¬ 
come accurate and knowledgeable about these activities 
and professions of men, just as, for instance, men them¬ 
selves have become au fait with the terminology of women’s 
dress. No longer does a man say, “I didn’t see what 
she had on; seemed to be something fluffy or diaphanous. 
Chiffon, d’you call it?” Nowadays the youthful male 
observer knows instantly whether “it” was of georgette 
or piece-lace, how it was made, and from which Molyneux 
model it was copied.) 

To cut this cackle and to come to that dark horse, 
Uncle Tom: his height was not more than five feet eight. 
He gave the impression of being the same height and 
chest measurement all over. (A compact build, I believe 
it is called? Or, as men say, a useful sort of shape to 
have? I didn’t mind his collar being (as Cynthia Oddley 
afterwards complained) the size of a waist belt that could 
have girdled a second Uncle Tom. His black, watered- 
silk ribbon and bunch of seals I liked. I liked the de¬ 
mureness with which this white-haired pirate sat back 


48 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


in his chair, said little, but with glances as quick and 
furtive as the flick of a lizard’s tongue, took in . . . 
everything. 


2 

We did not have a private room at the Ritz. 

Cynthia had decreed that a long table in the restaurant, 
where you could look at all the other diners, would be 
so much more amusing. 

Our party was, of course, the Veritys; the bunch of 
post-war lads I’d met ten days before in the Veritys’ 
padded room; myself; the Uncle Tom; and that big, 
graceful, gentle-voiced young man who had walked down 
Hill Street with me, that modern who had seemed some¬ 
how different from the others—young Mr. Mount. He 
sat opposite to me. I sat between Uncle Tom and one 
of Margaret’s bodyguard who had the distinction of be¬ 
ing (when in clubs, restaurants, or walking down Picca¬ 
dilly) constantly mistaken for the Prince of Wales. 

Table talk seemed at first to be less in the form of 
dialogue than of the indistinguishable orchestration which 
had filled the padded room. One caught, to begin with, 
only such scraps as: 

“—BLAST ye, scum! Where you sitting here first 
night of Thought he was Marvellous rotten Nelson Keys 
oh do look at that lunching at the Sports’ Club Cochran’s 
new show MAR-vellous Dempsey woman over there just 
like Coming off Wednesday night what Margaret’s frock 
Phyllis Titmuss no the next table not there; there! awful- 
looking crowd of people here ’night Eric what? I 
WHAT?—” 


DINNER AT THE RITZ 49 

Meanwhile Uncle Tom talked to me in bass undertones 
of the wonderful trip he had had across from Rio. 

“There’s nothing like a sea voyage,” I caught, watch¬ 
ing that pirate eye roving the Ritz. It quested about 
that over-gilded restaurant. It brought back, to the 
brain that was its base, much booty of amusement. I 
longed to know what Uncle Tom thought of it all, of 
the changes in decorations, the new lighting, the new 
fashions, the new hairdo, the more pronounced make-up 
on Englishwomen’s faces since he was last at home? But 
with that twinkle in his eye (and in his voice) he continued 
to describe “the weather all the way over . . . the per¬ 
fect blue . . . the birds that followed . . . Dolphins, 
too. Playing about in the waves, you know. Gambolling 
around the ship; schools of them. Schools of the crea¬ 
tures—” with another glance around. 

Probably he had summed up in his mind the character 
and the job of every man at every table within range, 
as well as the jobs and characters of Margaret’s body¬ 
guard. With those hectically bright youths he got on 
well, talking to them of motor launches, sea-going yachts. 
I could almost hear him thinking all the while: “Now, 
what are these? Young Oddley? Congenital idiot, but 
can’t help looking like a gentleman. Is he the only one 
left of that family? Wonder what he will make of the 
place? . . . That youngster talking to Margaret looks 
honest enough; but they say he’s going to read for the 
bar. That other fellow with the red hair. Father got 
money, I expect. That engineer. Hope he gets on, but 
everywhere is so crowded in the engineering world.” I 
saw him exchange a very friendly nod across the table 
with young Mount. 


50 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Then he said to me: “ That’s the man of this push.” 

I thought he was going to discuss it, but he went on to 
speak of one Pacific cruise when he, a lad of seventeen, 
had worked his way before the mast. 

His eyes were then on Margaret. What did he make 
of her? He said nothing. Didn’t even look it. Only 
I, sitting on his other hand, felt undercurrents of com¬ 
ment swirling in the heated air towards that worn-and- 
weary-looking young girl. 

Margaret’s small, heavily decorated face seemed, even 
since the other day, to have shrunk; while her eyes 
had grown. To me she looked older. Or was it the 
dress ? 

3 

Other times, other dresses! 

Once, a debutante of Margaret’s age was required to 
dimple like a peach in a “surround” of cobwebby white 
lace. That had its charm. Subsequent fashions have 
had theirs. Four years ago an evening dress would 
have displayed the whole of Margaret’s back down to 
the waist, a fashion which at least served the purpose 
of getting girls to tend their skins more thoroughly than 
they did in “modester” days. 

But now the decolletage of the moment allowed the 
merest straight line underneath those painfully prominent 
collar bones. A trying line! One out of which only 
the plumpest, the most pearly-white necK could emerge 
triumphant; according to old-fashioned views. Also, ac¬ 
cording to those views, there was something too bizarre 
for a quite-young girl about Margaret’s “Egyptian.” 


DINNER AT THE RITZ 


51 


Remember, this was in the November before those 
world-found excavations had brought modes of Luxor 
into every tube lift and Lyons tea-shop. Later, Cynthia 
would never have permitted Margaret to assume a fashion 
so inexpensive. So, at that time her “new Egyptian” 
was really original. 

No other woman at the Ritz that night had encased 
her face in a Sphinx headdress surmounted by a serpent 
of old Nile. None other had hung softly gleaming 
discs upon her chest. Not one showed those Cleopatra 
draperies wrapped about the loins, caught up, and then 
falling to the immense golden tassel between the ankle 
bones. Personally I thought that style might have suited 
Cynthia. One finds that, when other people dress their 
friends, those friends are often clad in something that 
would accentuate the type, not of the wearer, but of 
the chooser. 

Miss Oddley herself wore the gown in which she sat 
for her portrait by Mr. John: a straight petunia-coloured 
garment, in cut not unlike those shifts which are an issue 
of the Turkish baths. Transparent from mid-calf, it 
trailed in front over her many-strapped shoes of petunia 
satin and platinum. It dragged two yards of train, six 
inches wide, behind her. One lank white arm was bare, 
the other sleeve to the finger tips in heliotrope georgette. 
To-night her inevitable monocle gleamed in harmonizing 
purple. 

I glanced at Uncle Tom when he was introduced—he 
had not turned a hair at the eyeglass or at anything 
else about the young woman. Personally, I liked her even 
less at second sight. 


52 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


She was what used to be called (when I was young and 
had no sense) “the life and soul of the party.” 

With purple cigarette holder wagging away between 
vermilion lips, she talked and talked and talked, while 
Margaret hung on her words. Margaret’s bodyguard 
admired Cynthia second only to Margaret herself. Cyn¬ 
thia was a personality and a power. What she said went. 
Cynthia was an influence in the lives of all, from her 
gaping brother even to suppressed Mrs. Verity. Yet to 
me that girl possessed none of the stuff of girlhood. Her 
talk of shows and of the just-published “Garonne,” of 
Gwen Farrar, Chariot, Lady Diana, and that story of 
why Teddie Gerard wouldn’t wear her jewellery; her 
gown, her monocle, her attitude, her interests, her whole 
atmosphere suggested, not natural high spirits, not even 
natural frivolity, but something deliberate. Something 
made up in beauty parlour, studio party and—yes— 
opium dens. She was artificiality incarnate. 

In place of that overcharge of youth which is a laugh¬ 
ing, bubbling-over mountain stream, Cynthia Oddley’s 
gaiety seemed a calculated uprush as of chemicals. 

It seemed to vitalize the party. They followed her 
lead, and I felt that the girl had still something “up” that 
modish left-hand sleeve of hers. 

Even with this ultra-modern Cynthia the twinkling 
Uncle Tom was at his ease, exchanging remarks about 
dancing on board ship on the various lines. But all the 
time I felt that the quality of Cynthia was no more lost 
upon the old sailor than were the items on the menu. 


DINNER AT THE RITZ 


53 


4j 

“Nothing like sea air for giving one the appetite of a 
wolf,” he told me anon. “I seem to be the biggest eater 
here; or the only one. My niece used to be a little sweet 
tooth. Not making much of a meal, is she? Off her 
oats.” 

That I had noticed. 

Anything but a sweet tooth was Margaret Verity to¬ 
night! In the lounge she had taken her Martinis (two 
of these) dry. Her champagne dry. Between every 
course she nibbled at salted almonds, just as between 
every course she smoked (out of her long ivory holder) 
heavily scented cigarettes. No soup; a flake or so of 
richly sauced fish. A morsel of bird. She refused ice 
pudding. She left half of the savoury. As far as I 
could see she had only “let herself go” over the hors 
d’oeuures, that crowded array of little dishes gaudy- 
coloured as a futurist’s palette. Dishes of chopped-up 
crimson, of livid green, of sulphur-yellow-sprinkled-with- 
scarlet, of nacre-and-steel, of blood-red and cream; these 
were all highly spiced, salt, acid, vinegary, pimentes in 
the extreme. Morsels of stimulation for the jaded appe¬ 
tites of elderly dyspeptics one would have thought. But 
it was of these that the girl of nineteen made her meal. 

Other times, other appetites! 

While I sat there, outwardly consulting the menu, I 
reviewed foods that had seemed good to the tennis-playing, 
beagle-following, cross-country-running parents of those 
diners, say twenty-five years ago. 

I thought of beef gravy on Sunday, Vandyke brownj 


54 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


and piping hot Yorkshire pudding, how crisp outside! 
how soft-hearted within! 

Green peas: the first! Immense, succulent globes, 
greener than anything that grows: cooked with a little 
sugar and with a dark green, utterly limp garland of 
what had once been mint and which had given up all 
its soul of flavour to make more perfect perfection itself! 

Carrots! Fresh carrots chopped up into very small 
dice, put into a tea-cup, turned out like sand pies! No 
sauce, no mess over them! lovely they were. . . . 

Roly-poly pudding! Ah, featherlight of suet! Oozing 
lusciously with garnet-red damson jam! Bland cream 
on the top of that! Some of them would even add sugar 
to the lavish helpings of roly-poly pudding with cream, 
that they were given at home. 

At school, of course, there had been an expurgated 
austerer version of this food of the gods. . . . 

Forgetful for an instant of the century we live in, I 
leant back to chuckle to Violet Verity. 

“Do you remember ‘Boiled Baby’?” 

“I’m afraid I never back horses,” murmured Margaret’s 
mother absently through the zoo of chatter. Heaven 
knew what she thought I’d been talking about! 

Anon I was thinking of brown bread; moist, crusty, de¬ 
licious, with immense wobs of farmhouse butter spread 
above! 

I thought of porridge for breakfast: oatmeal porridge, 
thoroughly cooked, in which a child’s horn spoon can 
excavate galleries and channels and reservoirs into which 
to drop, endlessly slow, the moulten amber of syrup. . . « 
How greedy we used to be about our food! When I say 



DINNER AT THE RITZ 


55 


“we” I include the tiny Margaret Verity that I had 
known. For all these foods had been put before her. 
On all these had she thriven, in all these had she taken 
a growing child’s healthy delight. 

I thought— 

Do not imagine, please, that I sat there at the Ritz, 
silent, deaf, oblivious of all the gaiety around me and 
of the food before me while I conjured up these visions 
of twenty-year-old schoolroom menus; oh, no. One must 
indeed have an inactive mind that cannot, simultaneously, 
pursue its private meditations, catch fragments of the 
general babel— 

“—FRIGHTF’LY overworked as usual ha HA going 
on the films bright as Death sitting next to Mrs. scent 
you’ve got on Cynthia? the Big Fight oh! something extra- 
voluptuous of Babani’s not going on the FILMS? well 
did you see him in Le Moment A pres never got time to at 
Lou’s the chemists. But my Dear! Russian Ballet Varsity 
match suffering from chronic overwork ha ha always such 
wonderful cooking at the Sitting to Epstein? No? not 
a soul here to-night what Peter Quennell’s verse read the 
translation Oh, my God! when I’m so overworked that 
Heard the one about the Ha, ha, ha! Tell Margaret: 
overWORKed? Tell Margaret MARgaret—” 

—and carry on a dialogue with one’s dinner neighbour! 

5 

Other times, other topics! 

Now, a youth of the age of Margaret’s friend the 
Prince’s double, my dinner neighbour on my left—about 


56 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


what would he, in other days, have conversed to me? 
About my rheumatism, I suppose, and about what his 
own poor dear mother did for hers. That is, if he was 
a kind-hearted lad. If not, he wouldn’t have talked at 
all until there was a girl available to flirt with him. 
But since we lived in this century when so few mothers 
know what rheumatism means, and when the world has 
spun down several further ringing grooves of change, this 
fair-haired, pretty-faced boy seemed pleased to have his 
remarks listened to by any woman at all. 

“D’you know,” he confided, “I don’t get on with girls ?” 

“Must I believe that?’ 

“Fact, I assure you. I don’t seem to have any use for 
the girl of the present day.” 

“Sad—for her!” 

“Please don’t rag. I mean it. Wish I didn’t,” com¬ 
plained the Prince’s double, or one of His Royal High¬ 
ness’s countless doubles. It is to our nation’s score that 
this sporting, boyish-blond type pervades these islands. 
“I think it’s rotten that one can’t find a pretty girl 
who’s jolly, and magnetic, and got something in her head 
as well. None of these girls one meets takes the slightest 
interest in anything except ‘Been to any shows lately?’ 
and ‘What d’you think of my frock?’ They never read 
anything but fashion papers. They never do a hand’s 
turn for anybody else—I don’t mean Margaret, she’s a 
wonderful girl of course,” he put in, hastily blushing. I 
surmised that Margaret or Cynthia had snubbed him 
lately, hence his censure of the modern girl. 

The modern boy pursued: “They’re so dashed selfish. 
They never listen to anything a man says—” 


DINNER AT THE RITZ 


57 


“Ah, is that it?” 

“No, no .” He laughed and blushed again: he was quick 
enough and not unengaging. “You think it’s merely be¬ 
cause men always want to talk about themselves and have 
to have listeners, which girls won’t be, any more? It’s 
not only that. Girls think they can be as rude as they 
like. It’s a fact. Give you an example. The other 
night my mater and I had got up a party of six to dine 
and dance; booked the table. It was my mater’s party. 
She herself had asked the girl; yes, there was one special 
girl she knew I was keen on getting. Girl accepted. She’s 
a girl who goes about a tremendous lot, always has crowds 
of men—” 

(“Margaret,” I thought, “in spite of what he says.”) 

“—and I did think it was just possible that she might 
cry off a day or two before if something more amusing 
happened to turn up. Well, she didn’t. The very day 
though—just as we were starting off—the car was at the 
door! My mater was just putting on her cloak—the 
telephone rang. A man’s voice said, ‘Is that Mrs. So- 

and-So’s house? Yes? This is to say that Miss - 

(the girl) won’t be able to dine to-night. Good-bye.’ 
There we were a girl short!” 

(“Margaret” I thought.) 

“When I called next day, no saying she was sorry, 
nothing of that sort. Simply: ‘Oh, Mr. So-and-So in¬ 
sisted on taking me off to the new show at Dalys; quite 
good.’ No note to my mother. Nothing. I had a good 
mind to carry on the same way, to-night, about her 
party,” declared the Prince’s double, thus giving himself 
away completely as being sore yet still enslaved to the 



58 THE CLOUDED PEARL 

ffirl who had so treated him. “Don’t you call it dashed 
rude?” 


6 

The girl thus censured was sitting opposite at the table 
between the red-haired Eric and Lord Oddley. 

The dollish young man had lifted a finger and pointed 
to Margaret’s pearl string. I don’t know what he said 
about it. I heard Margaret’s listless-sounding reply 
(yes; this had been the little child who used to laugh so 
much, to laugh so that the cottage echoed and rang with 
the joyous rippling sound!): 

“Isn’t it a beastly nuisance?” she drawled. “Can’t 
think what happens. Some of them are losing absolutely 
all their lustre. And look, this little one at the end by 
the clasp. He’s going as black as ink!” 

“Well, if you won’t wash your neck—” ragged the boy 
Eric. “Of course, if young Margaret won't wash her 
neck, what do you expect?” 

Other times, other compliments. 

The Erics of Violet Verity’s day (or, say, of the day 
of Violet’s mother) might have turned something grace¬ 
ful about all pearls looking dark against such a throat. 
“To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne? Crystal 
is muddy,” complained the Elizabethan. These Neo- 
Georgians ran the joke rather a long time about Mar¬ 
garet’s refusing to wash her neck. 

“Not that unwashed necks are the trouble with pearls. 
On the contrary: I’ll tell you something about that,” 
Cynthia Oddley now took the floor, everybody leaning 


DINNER AT THE RITZ 


59 


forward to listen, as she rattled away. “A pal of mine 
on the stage had won some perfectly lovely pearls, and, 
frightful tragedy! she’s one of those people who simply 
don’t suit pearls. I don’t mean she does not look very 
sweet in them, she’s a dream of exquisite beauty as a 
matter of fact. You must meet her. Looks like a 
Domerque trailing about, the most lovely, evil expression; 
it’s not that. It is that there is something in her that 
seems to upset pearls. I saw her the other day, with her 
string on, and they were looking marvellous. ... I said: 
‘Why; you said pearls turn all beastly on you after you 
have worn them a certain time, but these are looking 
perfectly divine just now!’ She said: ‘Oh, yes, Cynthia; 
they have just been done* I said: ‘Been done? How 
do you mean?’ And she told me what she did for them. 
She knows a perfectly ghastly old woman, an old Jewess 
in Hoxton, and she takes the pearls to her, and this fat 
old, grimy, greasy crone puts the string round her fat 
greasy neck (all buried in the middle of her chins and 
things, I suppose!) and wears them without shifting them 
for about three days and three nights. And then they 
get back their lustre, and last, quite all right, for some 
time; and when they go bad again, this girl I know 
takes them back and has them done again, and so on. 
I might find out who the hag is and, Peggy, you can 
get her to do yours.” 

“Oh, Cynthia, must I? I’d hate having my string 
steeped in essence of Hoxton! Loathsome,” drawled 
Margaret. “Still, something really drastic has got to 
be done. It isn’t imagination that these are all turning 
dark. Pearls do go sick, don’t they, Uncle Tom?” 


60 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


He replied with a short nod: “Certainly. Pearls do go 
sick, Margaret.” 

Was there a note of double meaning in the voice of 
this man? Margaret in her perverse way was liking 
her Uncle Tom. I guessed she minded what he thought. 
She wanted him to agree. She saw that he didn’t. 

Then from his place opposite to me, young Mr. Mount 
suggested: “I’ve been told that the cure for sick pearls 
is sea water. Didn’t the Queen of Italy once confide some 
valuable pearls to the British Navy to take charge of 
while they were immersed for a—” 

“I shall try warm milk,” Margaret’s drawl interrupted 
imperiously his pleasant voice. “Lots of people say wash 
them in warm milk and leave them in the sun. Not that 
there is any sun nowadays.” 

“Not that Margaret would see it if there were! Ha, 
ha! How can she if she won’t get up until the sun’s 
gone down?” 

“Oh, shut up, Eric, you ass,” snapped the girl crossly; 
“just because I was in bed until yesterday with ‘flu’—” 

“You in bed?” 

“Yes, I was. I’d a temperature of one hundred and 
four.” (No wonder I had thought her looking worn and 
older.) “And I think it is a jolly sporting effort of me 
to have got up at all to-day, instead of crashing the 
party. I don’t believe any of you would have done it; 
would they, Violet?” 

“And you oughtn’t to have,” said Mrs. Verity, unhap¬ 
pily. “You ought by rights to have stayed in bed until—” 

“Oh, bed!” pouted Margaret. “Bed’s loathsome, except 
in the morning! Bed at any other time bores me to tear- 


DINNER AT THE RITZ 


61 


less, racking sobs. I say, you people! Are we going to 
stay here in this haunting restaurant for ever? Why 
isn’t the waiter bringing any coffee? Odds, why don’t 
you compel that waiter? You’re as hopeless with serfs. 
Odds . . . yes, of course I’ll have a liqueur. I jolly 
well need it. I’ll have a fine to buck myself up. . . .” 

“Why do they all have to drink like fish?” Uncle Tom 
asked me, sotto voce. “Not vitality enough to keep ’em 
going without? In my day, one went to parties of 
youngsters and found a lot of gabble and giggling, and 
silly, jolly, bubbling gaiety, always. All on soft drinks; 
anyhow, for the girls! Perfectly cheery, they were on 
lemonade, tea and coffee, claret cup. Nowadays . . . 
parties of youngsters . . . but it’s done on cocktails and 
pegs and liqueurs, now. Don’t seem to get any ‘go’ into 
themselves unless they get some drink in too. Not even 
the youngest of this bunch! Why?” 

“Nonsense, Vi. You're a pussyfoot,” Margaret was 
scolding her mother. “Yes, you are. A pussyfoot and 
a food faddist. Check it ... a double fine I’ll have. 
Tell him, Odds. Two green chartreuses, a benedictine, 
seven Grand Marniers, a cointreaux; the usual for you, 
Cynthia, I suppose? 

“Nothing for you, Vi? Nor for you? Very well: that’s 
that. And a large double fine for mademoiselle. . . .” 

7 

“And now for heaven’s sake buck up and get a move 
on,” Margaret commanded her guests, “if we ever intend 
to push on and dance.” 


62 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


There was dancing at the Ritz: a delicious band, a 
good floor. But, such is the tyranny of Fashion! That 
dancing room to the left of the long corridor as we filed 
out of the restaurant was practically empty. Margaret 
had voted for the Berkeley. We should find it packed, 
I knew, but never mind. It was just across Piccadilly, 
behind the rose-flame curtains of the big white Berkeley, 
that “Everybody” would be found to-night. 

Consequently it was well worth the fifteen shillings a 
head that Miss Verity would pay for her party. 

As we crowded into the j am-and-cream-coloured ves¬ 
tibule under the clustered crystal chandeliers, Cynthia 
Oddley darted a compelling look at her brother. She 
rapped out a “Claude!” 

Obediently the young man went up to her. Mutters 
were exchanged. 

Again, all that reached me was the word “afterwards”; 
and again, I had an uneasy presentiment about their plan. 


CHAPTER IV 


DANCE AT THE BERKELEY 

1 

O THER times, other dances. 

But these have been so often described. For 
once you shall be spared the jeremiad. . . . 
“While everything else has speeded up dancing has slowed 
down. . . . None of these odious negroid noises can for 
one instant compare with the languorous three-time waltz 
tune of dear dead days” (days when the mourners them¬ 
selves were modern young). There shall be the merest 
mention only of how “no modern girl can dream what 
delight it was to dance down a program of fourteen and 
fifteen of those waltzes, or how it felt, in the Lancers, 
to be carried off one’s feet, swung around like a toy 
by the strong arm of a partner such as you simply don’t 
see nowadays; and allowed to alight, softly as a blossom 
falling from a height on to the glossy surface of a stream. 
. . . No room in these disgusting crushes for anything 
of that sort. ... No poetry of motion in a modern 
ballroom. . . . Ah, dancing isn’t dancing nowadays. It’s 
simply doing Euclid and arithmetic with your feet”— 
thus the chief mourners of the days that are no more. 

Well, it’s easier to think that modern youth is inferior, 
than to admit that the thinker is neither modern nor 
young any more. There is a mind which says of each 

63 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


new fashion in amusements, games, music, art and dream, 
“The old is better”; but to keep up is more difficult than 
to criticize. 

All the same, the dancing of that evening was spoilt 
by overcrowding. Only with the tiniest of careful foot¬ 
steps could the dancers circle round the room at all. 
Shoes were trodden on. Shoulders brushed. Tulle hip- 
draperies were flattened. The hair-ornament of another 
girl, caught in Margaret’s golden-banded Sphinx head¬ 
dress, took moments to disentangle. 

Uncle Tom sat back and cocked his eye upon that 
quietly eddying, that somewhat anxious-faced throng. 

Aloud he said: “You ought to see some of those Argen¬ 
tine tango dancers. Wonderful!” He looked again at 
those English girls and boys, and his flickering glance 
launched all but audibly the word: 

“Beginners.” 

(Partial collapse of all those English boys and girls 
within eyeshot.) 


2 

One other touch of frost: there were only two girls 
to a whole party of young men. 

Other days, other averages. 

In Violet Verity’s coming-out season, to have “more 
men than girls there” used to be the dream of London 
hostesses. Always too many girls! (Some gifted Amer¬ 
ican diseuse used to give a brief recitation intended to 
represent any English gathering: “How do you do, 
Molly? How d’you do, Diana? How d’you do, Grace? 


DANCE AT THE BERKELEY 


65 


How d’you do, Lily? How d’you do, Pam? How do you 
do, Enid? WHERE’S YOUR BROTHER?”) Gener¬ 
ally there were rows of wallflowers; planted there. But 
not here. Not now. Why? Too much foresight? Girls 
won’t go to a dance except with dancing partners or 
when they know that partners will be provided. Young 
men, on the other hand, swarm to the music like bees 
to the sound of a beaten sauce-pan. Atavistically, I 
suppose, they conclude that there must be plenty of girls. 
Be that as it may, that bodyguard of highly presentable 
young dancing men took it in turns to sit out while Mar¬ 
garet and Cynthia danced. 

Margaret’s mother, who had not danced since the last 
waltz with her Jack, remarked to young Mr. Mount, sit¬ 
ting out beside her: “Such a pity that your fiancee wasn’t 
able to come! She would have been one more girl!” 

“Hardly a complimentary way of summing any lady 
up, Violet!” put in Uncle Tom disconcertingly twinkling. 

Whereat our hostess’s mother coloured in a way that 
reminded me of Margaret’s sudden vivid childish blush; 
and Mr. Mount murmured something pleasant about his 
fiancee’s hope to meet Mrs. Verity later on. 

I had now realized what made Mr. Mount “different.” 

His fellow-moderns here might conceivably have been 
at a loss without their accustomed background of jazz 
civilization. One could not conceive of Mr. Mount at 
a loss anywhere. His neat dark head, his fair-skinned 
clever face could be pictured appropriately set off by 
the most gorgeous of levee uniforms. A toilworn, greasy 
boiler suit would seem equally appropriate on that big, 
graceful body of his. With all the difference in occupa- 


66 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


tion and surroundings that that difference of garb ex¬ 
presses, Mr. Mount would be “at home” in either. 

I watched him dancing (particularly well) with Miss 
Oddley. He looked like one of the artistic pen-and-ink 
drawings with which Mr. Denis Bradley embellishes his 
advertisements. He talked sufficiently at dinner, although 
his conversation seemed the pattern on some Japanese 
parasol, held up to hide the colour of the user’s eyes. 
The talk of women in company is often this. The duty 
conversation of men, when they are not giving you their 
thoughts, is less like a pretty parasol than a dully damp 
umbrella, of which spokes get you in the eye. Mr. 
Mount’s absentmindedness did not take the form of drop¬ 
ping syllables off words, or the other form of that glazed 
stare which means that all but the actual body is far, 
far away. Only, well! He kept himself in the back¬ 
ground. 


3 

Presently I found myself dancing again with the 
Prince’s double, that lad with a grievance. 

He continued even more bitterly his indictment of 
modern girls. 

“Everything bores them,” he told me. “Bored at 
home. Bored when they are taken out. I’m beginning 
to see why so many fellows hang about after women of”— 
here he obviously did rapid mental arithmetic and gave 
up the answer—“women older than themselves. Girls 
wonder why. Well, that’s it. Men still want a woman 


DANCE AT THE BERKELEY 67 

to be a woman. Not just a mannequin who smears red 
wax on her lips and hates the thought of—” 

“Thought of what?” 

“Getting it smeared off again, I suppose. Do you 
know, to be perfectly frank, these girls are physically 
cold? They’re cold as mutton.” 

“Oh, come!” 

“They are. They’ve no earthly use for men, except 
to go about with. Do you know, they shy at getting 
engaged? Stick to one fellow for keeps? Not a hope,” 
the indictman ran on. “It’s all a matter of money. All. 
If by chance they do get hold of somebody who is well 
enough off to make it worth their while to marry him, no 
matter if he is a measly rat of a thing or if he is old 
enough to be their father, then they will freeze onto him 
like grim death. But, by gad! even then how they shirk 
—if you don’t mind my calling a spade a spade?—how 
utterly they do bar the idea of babies. Which my mater 
was quite keen upon when she was a girl, I believe,” he 
added, his young voice dropping wistfully from the note 
of tirade. “These girls—do you know what they call 
babies? They call them ‘the God forbids.’ Not only that, 
they mean it. Don’t you think something must be radi¬ 
cally wrong?” 

I answered: “Let me tell you about one girl I knew— 
during-the-war girl. Not this latest crop, but still fairly 
modern. Now she barred the idea of babies. She said 
to me: ‘Imagine going through all that! Those ghastly 
months! Giving up everything, dancing, riding and go¬ 
ing about; losing one’s figure, never being able to get into 


68 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


a decent frock, looking too, too unspeakable! And after 
all that, to crown it all, having—what? Not a pearl 
string (which would be worth it). Not a diamond bar; 
not even a new tortoiseshell-fitted dressing case. No. 
Having a nasty, squally, damp, disgusting baby! Only 
that.’ ” 

(Other times, other topics indeed.) 

“Exactly,” said the pseudo Prince of Wales; “just 
what I meant. All alike, these modern girls. No decent 
womanly instincts. What are they coming to?” 

“What this particular girl came to,” I told him just as 
the encore came to an end, “was getting gaily married 
and having two babies. Splendid little boys they were. 
She’s simply devoted to them. If I were you, I shouldn’t 
worry too much about the instincts of the modern girl!” 
All the same, I was not too sure that this history of my, 
girl friend would repeat itself in the case of a Margaret 
Verity. 

There she fox-trotted, wearing her modernized version 
of finery worn by that Egyptian flirt whom age could 
not wither nor custom stale . . . what garb could have 
seemed less appropriate for this wilting child? 

I watched that head of an imitation Sphinx between 
other heads as the dancers circled by under the subdued 
and glowing lights. I watched her face. Blank as a 
Benda mask, and as painted! The make-up was not the 
worst of the trouble. Assumed by so young a girl, that 
sticky lip carmine, caking illusion powder, clogging eye¬ 
lash black and smear of hyacinth blue on the eyelids 
might have seemed a piquant disguise had they decorated 
a face rounded, satin-skinned and gay. But, under the 


DANCE AT THE BERKELEY 


69 


maquillage and even in the becoming light, Margaret was 
drawn, sallow, strained. Worse; she was bored. The 
pursuit of pleasure? This was the pursuit all right, but 
where was the pleasure that should have lighted her up? 
Where the appropriate bubbling gaiety? Once, circling 
near me, she laughed through the music. That shrill 
gust of mirth didn’t reach her eyes. Peevish, her small 
oval face peeped over the shoulder of one admirer after 
another. Claude, Eric, Freckles, Stumpy, Prince. . . . 
Admirers, with one or other and all of whom this girl 
spent day after day of her unchaperoned life I 

4 

Other times, other chaperons. 

How dragonishly, once, was the young girl guarded! 
That reckless adventurer, Sir Richard Burton, took up 
chalk and tremulously wrote upon the wall for the eyes 
of a girl to whom he was not yet introduced, but who 
was to sway his life: “May I speak to you?” His Isabel 
(already prepared to follow him over all Asia) dared not 
yet break tradition. In turn she took up the chalk: “No; 
Mamma would not like it.” Later they lived one of the 
world’s romances. 

By Isabel Burton’s mamma the pagan element of sex 
was dreaded like fire, electricity, flood—forces that de¬ 
stroy continents, even if they also serve homes. Not for 
nothing were barriers set. To-day those barriers seem 
like the Roman sea wall—half a mile inland beyond high- 
water mark. Practically any youth of her class can 
arrange (if he so desires) to get to know practically any 


70 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


maid. Practically any girl goes about as she chooses 
with men friends at practically any hour. 

Young people will be young people, they tell you, they 
have always been the same—but the circumstances of their 
lives are no longer the same. Rebel hearts beat in Vic¬ 
toria’s reign, but there were no side-cars then. Side-cars, 
night club, and sport have influenced the association of 
the eternally discussed young. These now read what 
they choose of hair-raising fiction or blood-curdling facts 
(either, in our great-grandchildren’s eyes, may appear 
incredibly tame). To-day they discuss the ill-named 
Freud and any sex problem together. Side by side they 
sit through plays excavated from the Restoration period 
or evolved by Mittel-Europa. Incessantly they dance 
and, if not cheek to cheek, that’s merely because it’s no 
longer the fleeting fad. Playing, working, they scarcely 
separate. No one sees the risk. . . . Certainly the old 
risk (namely, that boy and girl, thrown together, quickly 
flame into catastrophic passion) is not the risk for the 
girl in Margaret’s circumstances. 

Other times, other dangers. 

Here there fits in a story I heard long afterwards from 
Uncle Tom. 

He said: “There’s rather a significant yarn about a 
couple of villages I once passed through up in the North 
of England. They faced each other on opposite banks 
of a dangerous stream. One of the villages had quite 
a reputation for pretty girls. The young fellows of the 
opposite village, when they were going courting, had to 
walk perhaps four or five miles round. In summer they 
used to swim, sometimes, across the ford. Anyhow, there 


DANCE AT THE BERKELEY 


71 


was always a lot of intermarrying. One or two young¬ 
sters had been drowned during flood time. Some bene¬ 
factor left a sum of money to build a good hefty stone 
bridge across that stream. The will was carried out. 
The bridge is there now. Here is the curious part: 
There weren’t any more marriages between the young 
people of the neighbouring villages. They were too near; 
they went elsewhere for their sweethearts.” 

To return to Margaret and her young man. Surely 
some girls must, in the course of weeks, have developed 
some tender preference? Some girls would have found 
attractive Eric’s red hair and blithe “ragging”? Others 
would have “fallen for” the Prince’s double? Others 
might have been impressed even by Claude’s well-bred doll¬ 
ishness ? 

Yet—basically, not one of these young men “meant” 
more to his young queen than did the waiter or the saxo¬ 
phone player. This flattering bodyguard she “had to 
have” for her entertainment; just as she “had to have” 
her Rolls, Cynthia’s vivacity, her Hill Street house, the 
constant stimulus of a thousand coloured, changing ex¬ 
citements. It took all these artificialities to give to 
Margaret Verity the faintest imitation of that thrill 
which races through a healthier girl when the young lover 
to whom she is, in primitive fashion, attracted , takes her 
hand for his dance. 

Another waft of the boys* talk drifted through The 
Kitten on the Keys: 

“—my tutor said fellow like yon girl I used to dance 
with Sandhurst at Eton get back to feeling like Death! 
Feeling like the ‘IF’ in If Winter Comes when I was at 


72 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


my last crammer’s I Lord I hope I when I was cramming 1 
at get back Oxford to-morrow depends upon partner 
you—” 

Could it be because they were all so young? Was the 
man lost in the playfellow? What would happen if Mar¬ 
garet were dealing with a man her senior but still young, 
who should possess the charm of character as well as every 
lure of sex? 

5 

Mr. Mount came up. The thought dashed through 
me then it would serve Margaret right if she fell in love 
with this young man; engaged, out of her reach. Never 
mind. If he could cause her to feel anything—even un¬ 
happiness!—it would be to the good. ... I doubt if on 
that evening Margaret noticed whether he were dark or 
fair. 

He turned upon her his very pretty smile. 

“We’re going,” he said regretfully. For such a big 
young man he had a peculiarly gentle voice. “I wanted 
so very much to dance with you, Miss Verity, and every 
time you have been engaged! And now we are going and 
I shall not have the chance.” 

Margaret turned her exquisite little sphinx-dressed 
head over her angular shoulder before going on with her 
arm locked in Cynthia’s. Margaret’s reply did not seem 
to disconcert the young man. To me it was a dash of 
cold water in the face. 

She drawled: “Well! That’s your loss, isn’t it?” Then 
she went on. 


DANCE AT THE BERKELEY 


73 


6 

I caught that bright, piratical eye of Uncle Tom. 

He raised one lichen eyebrow. Then he and I had a 
tiny, memorable interlude of conversation. Jammed in 
the buzzing crowd at the door, we had to wait. As we 
did so he remarked in bass undertones that only I caught: 
“My young friend Mount was perfectly right about the 
cure for sick pearls. Salt water! That’ll cure a pearl 
that’s going black. A sea voyage,” added Uncle Tom, 
as at last the crowd thinned sufficiently for us to get 
on and seek our wraps; “a sea voyage, and then—” 

“Then?” 

“Then a year on a desert island.” 

I saw little hop? for his recipe. A desert island? That 
girl? 

Six weeks later that girl was on that island. 

Picture for one instant that contrast. Instead of 
packed, noisy rooms, that wide calm seascape, that sun¬ 
set over the waves, that middle-distance of tawny sands, 
that foreground of rocks, wild greenery, red-starred 
cactus blooms! 

Instead of that atmosphere reeking with humanity, 
food, overheated air, and scented clothes, the fresh yet 
gentle breath of the sea. Instead of a nervy girl, painted, 
dolled up, and standing there surrounded by young men, 
a girl bareheaded, barefooted, clad in a rough tattered 
skirt and a man’s blue jersey, running along by the sea’s 
edge with arms full of driftwood, face full of eagerness 
for life. 

This “adventure” was coming nearer, nearer, with 


7 4 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


every faint tick of the Chinese clock through the Verity s’ 
London drawing-room, with every joyous beat of the 
waves upon that island beach. . . . 

But to go back to that evening of dinner at the Ritz, 
dance at the Berkeley and the Oddleys’ plan for “after¬ 
wards.” 


7 

Later on, I was told that plan. 

It was to take Margaret on to a certain Chelsea studio 
belonging to a friend of Cynthia’s. I had heard about 
her, seen photographs in the Bystander . That winter 
she went in for wax sculpture. Also, for carving in 
wood and for painting (with white flesh tints, green lips, 
large blue eyes with green lashes) those grotesque heads 
afterwards sold as hat stands to show off the latest ideas 
at the boutique fantasque of an exotic milliner. This 
amateur of the bizarre was clever; petted by more than 
one society set. She had hobbies, however, which leave 
their mark. She had that curious look about the eyes, 
she had the leaden skin, the sometimes impossible finger 
nails, and the jumpy nerviness which are betrayals to 
a doctor’s eye. She was of the type that is known in 
beauty parlours as being terribly difficult to massage into 
anything like the expected freshness. Yes, she had hob¬ 
bies! She dabbled in experiments with many kinds of 
stimulants. She had acquired an opium pipe. She 
melted aspirins into some subtle punch of her own con¬ 
cocting. She drank “Coca liqueur,” that tonic not yet 


DANCE AT THE BERKELEY 


75 


dropped upon by the faculty as dangerous . . . she 
sniffed ether . . . about her futuristically decorated 
studio she had little hiding-places for more obviously 
suspect commodities. Tiny boxes of that which look 
like the coarsest kitchen sugar. You may have seen it 
at your dentist’s. 

It was to this studio that the sculptress had invited 
Cynthia Oddley to bring “that very pretty girl who was 
so keen on cocaine just for once” and on seeing “if it 
were really as amusing as some of these people made out.” 

That girl was Margaret Verity. 

The amusement which had died out of everyday life 
she was to be shown how to seek (as many others seek 
it) in a world of artificially induced dreams. 

I don’t know how much Claude Oddley knew of what 
that “afterwards” in the studio involved? I don’t think 
he knew much. He was a soft-hearted fool of a boy; 
utterly swayed by his alert deliberately lively sister. She 
had arranged everything . . . she had arranged all de¬ 
tails of carrying off Margaret when the dancing came 
to an end. 


8 

“What’s Margaret up to now, with the noble lord and 
that sister of his?” added Uncle Tom in his deep under¬ 
tone. “Why is she being driven by them instead of com¬ 
ing home in the Rolls?” 

“Where are those girls?” This was from Margaret’s 
mother, turning anxiously. “It’s nearly three; aren’t we 


76 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


all ready to go? Where is Margaret? She was here in 
her coat a minute ago. Did she go back? Where’s 
Cynthia?” 

At that moment Cynthia Oddley, looking rather fright¬ 
ened, hurried out of the cloakroom, alone. 


CHAPTER V 


LOVE-MAKING A LA MODE 

1 

C YNTHIA’S plan had gone agley. 

Even as Margaret with fur coat over Egyptian 
draperies had slipped back to the cloakroom to 
join her friend, and had pressed to the mirror, the lip¬ 
stick in her fingers had fallen jangling among the 
trinketry that dropped to the end of her chain. Mists 
danced between Margaret and her reflection. She had 
only time to exclaim: “Cynthia! I—I’m feeling rotten—” 
Gadding too soon after that influenza attack, she was 
now in the grip of a relapse. 

So that was that, and not a bad thing either if you 
think of the alternative. . . . 

As it was, it meant home for Margaret, a nurse at once, 
a Harley Street doctor, orders of bed for the next week. 

2 

What a trying week for Mrs. Verity! 

Margaret, fractious as a grown-up man kept in bed, 
complained that the trained nurse frazzled her. So her 
mother tended her. During three days when the invalid’s 
temperature was up, bells never ceased to trill through 
the house, nor feet of the young men to tramp up the 

staircase to the padded room. 

77 


78 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Then the highly salaried Hill Street staff murmured 
louder than the children of Israel in the desert. With 
servants poor Mrs. Verity never had been able to cope. 
These knew that, as infallibly as children know upon 
whose necks they may trample. Cook sent up to say 
she didn’t know she had been engaged to run so many 
extra meals a day, and how many would there be for 
dinner, please, as cook wasn’t feeling at all the thing 
herself and the kitchen maid’s evening out and all. 
Benson, the Sphinx, gave stately notice. Followed by 
housemaid and underhousemaid. The tweeny maid hov¬ 
ered in corridors and wept resentfully on landings where 
no tweeny maid should be. Among them all Mrs. Verity 
was at her wit’s end, until her Uncle Tom arrived and— 
somehow—restored discipline. 

“I’m a born interferer,” he told me. “I’ve fixed the 
staff. The family of Oddley is past me so far.” 

Young Lord Oddley only moved from the Verity’s door¬ 
step to dash to his club and once again to telephone en¬ 
quiries. His sister attached herself to the household 
more firmly than she attached the coloured monocle of 
the day to her eye. 

Cynthia insisted upon seeing Margaret. If Margaret 
was asleep Cynthia could wait. There was something she 
absolutely must see Margaret about. Important busi¬ 
ness ; yes, business. Margaret knew about it. If Cynthia 
might have a spot of lunch? Just a whiskey and splash, 
with a caviare sandwich or anything at all. Presently 
Margaret was well enough to raise her lean young form, 
clad in black silk pyjamas piped with orange satin, to 


LOVE-MAKING A LA MODE 79 

make grimaces at her tonic and to demand a fountain 
pen, something to write on and her cheque book. . . . 

Yes; where was Margaret’s cheque book? Yes; it was 
necessary to write a cheque now. It was urgent. Please 
don’t argue; find her cheque book. Where? Weill 
Look! Either it was among that pile of lime-green 
undies in that second drawer— No? Oh, damn! Or 
it was between the pages of that French book of Cynthia’s 
“A L’ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs,” on the dressing 
table? Not? Then under that heap of furs and the 
hat box on the top of the wardrobe. Not there? Absurd! 
Must be somewhere! Why couldn’t it be found? Mar¬ 
garet would get up herself in a minute. . . . Very well, 
then, LOOK. Had anybody taken it down into the draw¬ 
ing-room? 

In the drawing-room Uncle Tom asked mildly what 
the deuce the girl wanted with a cheque book just now. 

“She didn’t say,” replied the mother hurriedly search¬ 
ing. “Ah! Here it is! Slipped into the middle of all 
those new gramophone records. I’ll run with it—” 

“Hold on, Violet. Does Margaret lend money to Miss 
Monocle?” 

“Uncle! I never ask what the darling does with her 
own money.” 

“Wouldn’t surprise me if the darling had to settle all 
her friend’s bills that aren’t taken to the fond brother. 
I’d mislay that cheque book again, if I were you, Violet, 
my dear.” 

But Violet Verity had dashed upstairs again to her 
child’s room. 


80 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Standing four-square on the hearthrug, Uncle Tom 
began amplifying to me his first hint dropped at the 
Berkeley. 

“Pity we can’t ship off some of these youngsters to 
live like savages on a coral reef! Better than any schools. 
Life in the open air . . . simplify everything . . . use 
their muscles . . . wholesome food . . . fruit, fish, what 
they can collar for themselves. . . . 

“People turn up their noses at health fads. Bernarr 
MacFadden, physical culture; call it rot. Seems a more 
pleasing form of rot than this. . . . Give ’em a chance to 
grow straight-limbed, clean inside, clear-skinned. Hold 
themselves right. Look at the shape of life. Get back 
to roots of things. Pity we can’t pack them off by main 
force,” mused this fanatic. “If I had my way—but 
there’s got to be a change of air— Is that the doctor 
going downstairs now?” 


3 

The shrewd-eyed doctor had ordered a change of air 
as soon as Miss Verity could take it. He agreed with 
Mr. Lloyd’s idee fixee that the best thing in the world for 
her would be a sea voyage. 

“I refuse,” snapped the convalescent from the cushions 
of the drawing-room divan (this was on her first day 
down). “Even crossing the Channel nearly does me in 
every time. Even by aeroplane I arrive a corpse. Don’t 
I, Vi?” 

“Indeed, Uncle, the darling is always most terribly 
seasick.” 


LOVE-MAKING X LA MODE 81 

“So was Nelson. Few days’ seasickness hurts nobody. 
Does ’em good, Margaret.” 

Margaret limp, pasty-faced, swathed in Shetland wool 
shawls and yellow silk kimono padded like the advertise¬ 
ment for Michelin tyres, rolled dull eyes up to the black 
ceiling. “I nearly expire at the very first sniff of the 
engines on one of those disgusting, filthy little boats.” 

“Why pick a dirty boat? Travel en luxe , my dear. 
Matter of fact, I’ve a scheme about that,” propounded 
Uncle Tom, setting his square bulk in a firmer stance 
upon the hearthrug. “I know the boat you ought to 
take. Most enjoyable trip round to Madeira you could 
have in her. The very boat.” 

Margaret dropped her lids as though already she felt 
that vessel’s motion. 

“Ah, she is a peach,” enlarged Uncle Tom, his boyish 
eyes twinkling down from under his snowed-upon hair. 
“The ‘Sweetheart II’ is her name. Comfortable as 
a first-class hotel. Everything up to the minute. 
Pretty as a picture too. I know he’d lend me that boat 
for a cruise—yes; by the way, she is my young friend 
Mount’s steam yacht.” 

Margaret, without troubling to open her eyes, vouch¬ 
safed : “I don’t like your Mr. Mount.” 

“Oh, darling! When he has been so particularly nice 
about us. Not every young man would have taken it 
as he did! I mean about strangers coming into 
his brother’s fortune. It would have been his, remem¬ 
ber.” 

“He’s wallowing in pots of it.” 

“It doesn’t always follow. The people with most 


82 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


always seem to want more, Margaret. He’s so different 
to that. And he is so nice looking—” 

“Who bothers about what men are like to look at?” 
drawled Margaret. “He’s got horrid manners, I con¬ 
sider.” 

“You needn’t be troubled with them,” twinkled Uncle 
Tom. “Archie Mount needn’t necessarily come to sea 
with us.” 

“I don’t go to sea with anybody. Dover to Calais is 
the farthest sea trip I mean to take ever,” snapped Jack 
Verity’s daughter. “Let everybody understand that!” 

Here an apprehensive glance from Mrs. Verity at Uncle 
Tom. 

Unperturbed, he said: “No longer voyage? Still, 
you’ve got to have a change. Not much of that in foggy 
old London.” 

“Well, then, Paris,” elected Margaret, languidly cast¬ 
ing onto the leopard-skin rug another cigarette end. 
“Wire to the Meurice for the suite I like.” 

“Might as well wire to the Carlton here. Not much 
difference between our climate and theirs at this time of 
year,” objected Uncle Tom. “If you won’t go on the 
sea, Margaret, go near it. What about the Cote 
d’Azur ?” 

“More like it,” conceded Margaret. “If I must move 
anywhere let’s go to the South of France. That’s an 
idea. Monte amuses Cynthia. She likes Nice. Cynthia’s 
planned to be there at the end of December before they 
go on to Cairo. Righto, Vi. The South of France. 
We’ll go on to Egypt later with Cynthia and Odds.” 


LOVE-MAKING A LA MODE 83 


Later, Mr. Lloyd asked: “Violet, is your girl going to 
marry that fool—I mean his young lordship?” 

“The darling has refused him five times,” reported Mrs. 
Verity, with two distinct expressions in her gentle face 
that mirrored two attitudes of mind at war. She could 
not look upon Claude Oddley as a desirable son-in-law; 
she was equally unable to keep from preening herself over 
his courtship of her child. 

“Margaret declares that she won’t marry anybody at 
all for years yet.” 

“The rat-faced—I mean the sister is all for the match. 
Don’t blame her either from her point of view. Conveni¬ 
ent enough for her to have the rich young sister-in-law 
under her thumb. A nasty girl, Miss Oddley.” 

“Oh, I don’t know, Uncle,” hesitated Violet (who 
always had that hatred of unmitigated censure). “I 
shouldn’t call Cynthia that.” 

“I should. I’d call her and all of her kith and kidney 
part of the blight that is settling on the modern young. 
I haven’t said much about them since I’ve been back, 
but”—watching Violet out of the tail of that eye, he 
discoursed to me—“frankly, they worry me.” 

I played up to him. “What, Mr. Lloyd? The 
manners ?” 

“No. Those may be a little worse on the top to-day, 
but I don’t care—even for their cheeking their fathers 
and mothers by their Christian names. Healthy re¬ 
action from children who said ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ to parents 


84 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


who used to thrash them into imbecility or cripples! I 
don’t lose any sleep over that. Let the youngest in the 
party seize the deepest chair, mix whiskeys and sodas, 
grab the telephone without a ‘May I?’ in other people’s 
houses. Matter of taste. Not the point.” 

“The point,” I had suggested, “is the moral aspect—?” 

“No; I give up modern morals. I am like that sen¬ 
sible man, King Charles Second, who ‘never meddled with 
the souls of ladies.’ Doesn’t bother me when unblushing 
young buds tell me that marriage is a toppling institu¬ 
tion, with barely two more generations to go. Perhaps 
the kids are right. I shan’t be here to see. Perhaps it’s 
perfectly true that ‘virtue’ of yesterday is ‘sex complex’ 
of to-day, and may be ‘crime’ of to-morrow. Half that’s 
talk. Even if it isn’t, I let that side of it alone. But, 
mark you”—Mr. Lloyd’s shrewd brown face had set reso¬ 
lutely—“I do worry about their physical health.” 

Mrs. Verity, from her corner, looked pained. 

“Mentality? Well. Say they use their brains for dif¬ 
ferent things. I don’t mind their not walking and their 
not reading—although those were two of my favourite 
occupations when I was a youngster,” said Uncle Tom. 
“This lot never puts eye to classic or foot to ground. 
Never mind. Why should they? Their exercise they take 
in dancing. Why should they walk anywhere when they 
can get there in a tenth of the time? Why read if they 
don’t want to spoil eyesight over print? Nothing that’s 
ever been written in a book is worth what they can look 
at with their own eyes. But do they use their eyes ? Do 
they look at the country—or each other—with any en¬ 
joyment? Does Margaret? [Not she.] These lads 


85 


LOVE-MAKING A LA MODE 

might be a battalion of negro pages or Spanish dwarfs 
to fetch and carry for all she knows. I’m not grousing, 
that’s only temporary. But mark you”—here he spoke 
grimly enough—“I shall grouse if it means a permanent 
state of limp unfitness. Bodies—that is what I worry 
about.” 

“Really, Uncle—” Violet had hesitated. The late- 
Victorian of her type always said “figure” instead of 
“body.” 

Her uncle drove ahead. “Strength and beauty— 
where ought these to be found? In the young bodies of 
the growing generation—the bodies that ought to hold 
the sound mind and the decent nature. That’s where 
we look for the nation’s hope. Some of these brats aren’t 
justifying our confidence. What’s to be done with them?” 

“You can’t ‘do’ anything with modern young,” I had 
suggested. “When you were it, could anybody older do 
anything with you , Mr. Lloyd ? They couldn’t do a thing 
with me when they tried. So I don’t expect anything 
better now it’s my turn to watch the young.” 

“There’s more to watch now, my dear, than in your 
girlhood.” 

“M’m?” 

“More scope,” he had insisted. “It’s made easier, 
quicker for the young to destroy themselves. Night clubs, 
shows, drinks, luxuries; tearing about on their latest- 
model, million-Robot-power engines ... all excellent 
things—if they learnt how to use ’em. They abuse ’em. 
They can’t learn where to stop.” 

“Because they are all so young, Margaret’s friends,” 
Violet had pleaded. “The oldest isn’t twenty-four.” 


86 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“And, Mr. Lloyd, they can’t be expected to balance 
things as we can—” 

“You mean we are old fogeys? Agreed. Still—” He 
turned to me. “Now supposing there was a competition 
for walking, swimming, life enjoying, endurance and 
energy generally—which of these youngsters at the Ritz 
that night would you, yourself, refuse to take on?” 

I mused. “Perhaps you’re right. Even at my age—* 
yes! Yes. I would take on any girl in Cynthia Oddley’s 
set.” 

“Well, can you imagine Cynthia, Margaret and Co. as 
fogeys? Can you imagine them—” Freely he parodied: 

“What will they make at forty, if the Lord keeps them alive. 
When they've let themselves go mouldy, before they are 
twenty-five ? 

“I’ll tell you. They’ll make the fortunes of the nerve 
specialists and the nursing homes of England in—” 

“Oh, come,” I protested, “you can’t take a leisured, 
pampered minority as typical of the nation’s youth!” 

“No. But when my own flesh and blood is to be found 
deteriorating in that small, luxury class that sets the 
pace for the others ... I do worry about my young 
niece. Violet! (Margaret’s mother looked more than 
distressed.) Violet, you were a strong, bonny girl; fresh 
as a daisy; you handed on what you were given—” 

“Please, Uncle dear—” 

“And your Jack was the finest young fellow who ever 
went to sea. . . . What sort of grandchildren do you 
think you are going to get? Little Oddleys?” 


LOVE-MAKING A LA MODE 


87 


Silence in that padded room. What could she say? 

“Violet, my dear, that family is finished. There’s every 
sign of that in its last boy and girl. Finished, dead. 
Why bolster it up with fresh blood, if you’ll excuse my 
mixed metaphors? Why marry it? That beastly young 
woman is working all she knows how to bring that about. 
Why have her here?” 

“It’s Margaret’s house,” sighed Margaret’s mother 
faintly. “The darling is so loyal, so generous to her 
friends. It seems to her natural that she should settle 
dress bills for Cynthia. Yes! I—I couldn’t help seeing 
the counterfoil. She mislaid her cheque book again just 
now. Sent it down to the kitchen under a stack of Vogues. 
I did see that eleven hundred pounds had been made out 
to Miss Cynthia Oddley—” 

“What?” 

“Too much, isn’t it? I think ... I must ... I 
shall,” decided Mrs. Verity trembling. “I am going to 
speak to Margaret about that.” 

5 

That tardy speaking to reduced to tears—not Mar¬ 
garet, but Mrs. Verity. 

Whereat in one of her rare fits of impulsive affection 
the girl flung her arms about her sorely tried parent and 
rated herself for being a beast to her “angel of a 
Mums.” 


'* You are so good you make me worse. 
Some women are like this, I think.’ 


88 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“I was always a rotten daughter. Even at the cot¬ 
tage. You remember, Mums? When I used to say: 
‘You’ll have to love me back into goodness’?” 

“Ah, my darling baby. Still the same baby to me if 
you only didn’t get taken from me by your friends, if 
you would always be like this as you are at the bottom of 
your heart, instead of—” 

Twisting herself away, Margaret hectored again. 
“You’re not going to make me say I’ll drop my best pal, 
though. You absolutely misjudge her. As for Uncle 
Tom, he can’t pretend to begin to understand. Ridicu¬ 
lous that I shouldn’t help Cynthia! It wasn’t dress 
bills, as it happens. It was bridge—and of course some 
of it was mah-jong. I can’t explain to you why she 
couldn’t go to Odds, because one can’t give one’s pals 
away,” Margaret feverishly protested. “Cynthia can’t 
help it if they are so wickedly poor. Yes, wickedly poor 
compared to me! Odds has just enough to get along 
with; but he had debts to pay off when he came of age, 
as you heard from Cynthia. He had to let their old 
place, their beautiful old place in Devonshire, with the 
yew tree a thousand years old and the chapel where 
Lady Cynthia was walled up and her ghost still walks 
and the bed with Queen Elizabeth’s handkerchief left 
under the bolster! Wasn’t it bad enough that the Oddleys 
had to let that and to pig it in Half Moon Street them¬ 
selves—” 

“To ‘pig it,’ Margaret? The rent of their Half Moon 
Street flat is more than your dear father saw for a year’s 
pay.” 

“You don’t understand. People of your generation 


89 


LOVE-MAKING A LA MODE 

can’t be expected to cope with our standards, as Cynthia 
said. Understand, Violet,” her daughter’s fiat went 
forth, “if you’re not nice to Cynthia, if you won’t invite 
her here or when we are abroad together— Well, there 
is one thing I might do. There’s—” 

“What?” murmured Margaret’s unhappy mother. 
The door opened. 

“Lord Oddley,” announced Benson gloomily. 

6 

That afternoon Lord Oddley proposed to Margaret for 
the sixth time. 

I can tell you about it, since I was there at the time. 
So was the girl’s mother. 

I don’t believe it would have made any difference to the 
girl if Cynthia, Benson, the butler, her Uncle Tom, and 
the entire bodyguard had also been in the room. 

That padded casket of a place was (if possible) more 
chaotically characteristic of itself than on the afternoon 
of my first call. 

Full up was it of fainting flowers in beribboned baskets 
(offerings from the bodyguard) of scattered magazines, 
yellow French books, of littered confectionary, cushions, 
boxes of forced strawberries, peaches partially eaten, 
plates dark with grapeskins, the usual top dressing of 
tobacco refuse, and a half-finished Bovril and brandy. 
Heavens, how stuffy it was! Behind the glass screen the 
wood fire blazed half-way up the chimney. When Mar¬ 
garet was upstairs those heavily curtained windows had 
been allowed to stand open, but now once more they were 


90 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


carefully shut. In among the landslide of couch cushions 
little was to be seen of Margaret but the limp, crumpled 
dull-brown hair, the small pallid face, and the white wrist 
of one hand. 

Claude Oddley, who always kissed Margaret’s hand 
when he came in with the gesture he had learnt from his 
French tutor, still held her lax fingers. 

In Mrs. Verity’s girlish “set” for a girl to have her 
hand held by a young man had still been in the nature 
of a fascinating impropriety. Margaret gave her hand 
up to her admirers without any more ado than she gave 
to one and another of the bodyguard her sable stole to 
hold or her bunch of jingling golden gadgets to examine. 
No more than that was it to her that she reclined, under 
the eyes of her mother and of her mother’s friend, with 
fingers locked into the clasp of a young man who had 
for two years been making love to her, and who evidently 
meant to continue that courtship. 

There he sat at her feet on his favourite floor cushion 
of black-and-gold-and-dragon’s-blood-red brocade. His 
legs, crossed under him, were limp as those of the Claude 
doll now flung in an abandoned pose over the sofa end; 
his gilt-plumed head was sunk deep into his slight chest. 
He was not ungraceful, that youth; though in the utter 
bonelessness of his attitude he looked, I thought, as if 
he had a stick of warm macaroni where most people keep 
a spine. 

“Odds,” drawled his lady love, “when you came in I 
was going to discuss the state of holy matrimony (though 
why ‘holy’ I don’t know) with my young mother—” 

Immediately Mrs. Verity began to look nervous. Not 


LOVE-MAKING A LA MODE 91 

to be wondered at if you consider, first, the rosy mist of 
taboo and “Hush—dear, hush” with which her type sur¬ 
round the distant snow mountains of love and marriage. 
And secondly, the exploring methods of the modern young 
when irrupting (as it were with metaphorical moun¬ 
taineering Alpine stocks and ringing shouts) that taboo. 

“Ha! don’t let me interrupt the mystic topic. Carry 
on,” returned young Oddley. I noticed (not for the first 
time) his pleasing voice. Muted yet distinct. Full, as 
is the tune of a regimental march! of long-dead gal¬ 
lantries, of braveries, of tradition. So, centuries ago, 
might the Sir Claude Oddley have spoken who was close 
friends with young Prince Harry. Those modulations 
had sounded in the word-of-command of Oddleys who had 
fallen in the Civil War. It takes more than three gen¬ 
erations or four to compose the timbre of such a voice, 
the last family feature of all to degenerate. But such 
details were lost upon Margaret, even as her admirer ap¬ 
pealed (with the jesting manner that hid truth) to her 
mother. “Mrs. Verity, don’t you agree with me that it 
would be a good move for Peggy to marry young?” 

“Darling,” mocked Margaret in the manner that robs 
of sweetness and significance the sweetest, most signifi¬ 
cant word our language owns. “My poor darling, mis¬ 
guided Odds, I have already broken it to Vi that I shan’t 
dream of getting definitely married until I am at least 
a mature twenty-seven or more.” 

“Which will bring me up to twenty-nine. I say,” com¬ 
plained Claude Oddley, “that’s too long to make a man 
wait.” 

A man? An anaemic boy. A suffering boy, however. 


92 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Whatever ulterior motives marked his sister’s affection 
for Margaret, Claude’s was genuine. I regarded this 
youth sitting with his back to me so that I saw only that 
smooth gilt head over a faint blue line of silken shirt 
collar, that slight back under the indigo-blue jacket 
padded at the shoulders. What was he? Brutally, a 
waster, a dilettante of life. Not brains for any profes¬ 
sion. Not money enough successfully to play the gilded 
idler. What was there “to” him at all? A certain 
amount of inherited breeding, the public school manner, 
the jargon, the modes of the moment. Anything beyond 
these? Yes. Honest boyish devotion to that under¬ 
vitalized girl. 

Certainly it was not Margaret’s fault if she could not 
return Claude’s devotion. But a sounder girl would have 
felt sorry, respectfully sorry, for his sincerity. 

But Margaret, who could give not what men call 
“love,” did not appear to feel that love in another should 
have even gentle treatment. 

“You’re sure it is you I’m going to marry,” she flipped 
at him. “Full of hope, isn’t he, ladies?” 

Mrs. Verity flushed up to her slightly grey hair, gave 
an uncomfortable smile and murmured mechanically about 
milk or lemon. Behind the vorticist silken tea-cosy she 
confided to me: “I should rather have died—the darling 
doesn’t care enough to be shy!” 

And Claude Oddley? The way in which he took it was 
to care too much to be shy. As if no one else was there 
he took the fingers which he held, and lifted them, almost 
as if he did intend to smooth them against the hollow of 
his young cheek. 


93 


LOVE-MAKING A LA MODE 

“Can’t stop my hoping, Peggy!” he said. “I say, 
PeggJ? I’m hoping that if I keep on long enough you 
will—” 

“Will what?” 

“Find yourself one day married to me after all.” 

“What a copy-cat you are. You got that ‘find’ from 
Cynthia. I know you did. Cynthia always says that in 
love affairs people don’t really do anything. They 
merely ‘find themselves doing’ this and that. Why can’t 
I? I never have.” 

“Do you want to?” took up Claude eagerly; “do you, 
Peggy?” 

“But of course I do! I want to find myself doing 
everything that’s at all intriguing!” 

(Intriguing! The passion that moulds destinies!) 

Margaret’s big, exaggeratedly made-up eyes gazed 
speculatively beyond Claude’s slight shoulder. 

She mused: “I wonder if being in love is as amusing 
as they say, or whether it is half chat?” 

(“Amusing!” That which transfigures or devastates 
the lives of men and women!) 

“Try, Peggy, try.” The boy flushed as he urged. He 
straightened that stick of limp macaroni into something 
that more resembled backbone as he sat up. He caught 
Margaret’s other hand. He did lower his voice (imagin¬ 
ing possibly that this would not carry through Mrs. 
Verity’s outburst of small talk to her other guest). But 
even subdued, the clear-cut syllables carried: “Give me 
a chance to show you, Peggy, old thing. ... You 
might . . . Do.” 

“Do have some muffin while it is hot,” Mrs. Verity was 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


94 

urging me shakily. I could see that this romantic, ardent, 
yet reticent soul was feeling more agonizingly shy than 
she had done since her last term at school. 

Quite oblivious of us, the younger generation pursued 
their dialogue. 

“Yes, look here. . . . This has been going on for per¬ 
fect ages ... for two years it’s been making me feel 
like death,” Claude Oddley declared in the tone that 
should be heard only by one woman in the world—at least 
only by one woman at a time! The tone of emotion too 
rushed, too ardent to find the mot juste or indeed any 
words at all. “You’ll never find anybody—” 

“Oh, shan’t I?” 

“You’ll never find anybody more infernally in earnest 
than I am. Ever since I saw you in Switzerland that 
time. . . . Ghastly dance you’ve led me. ... For two 
mortal years I’ve had to feel like this about you. . . . 
There’s been nobody else that I have had the faintest 
use for. Won’t you give me a chance? ... I am so 
keen ... I’d make you ... if you’d only, only—” 

To me, as I sat there trying to make talk about all 
the old schoolfellows of Violet and me who had since 
been turned into corpses or wives, the muttered love- 
making seemed horribly pathetic. This boy was in ear¬ 
nest. That energy which fighting ancestors had spent 
in battle, that intellect which had occupied them with 
statecraft—all that was left over of those things as an 
inheritance to this last of their line, Claude Oddley put 
into first love. The atmosphere of that room simmered 
with the unmistakable electricity of it. It flamed in him. 

“Peggy, Peggy . . . I’m mad about you . . . I’m 


LOVE-MAKING A LA MODE 95 

hopeless. It thrills me just hearing people talk about 
you. Can’t you let me show you—” 

With detached interest the girl asked: “What do you 
suppose it is that thrills you about me like this? Two 
years ... as Cynthia says, it isn’t natural for a pash 
to last all that time. It becomes a complex; no, a fixa¬ 
tion. It isn’t as if you never saw any girls, like people 
in the days when there were only about one or two in 
the parish, and when everybody was faithful to the ONE, 
and all that. You see mobs of wonderful girls—” 

“They are not wonderful. They’re not you. I haven’t 
the faintest use for anybody who isn’t you. Oh, Peggy, 
you are you! . . . different. . . . Nobody else is you 
youish—” 

This time he did press her hand to his cheek, to his lips. 
Had that been the young Jack Verity, no power on 
earth could have induced him to give a demonstration such 
as this of young Lord Oddley! 

Had that been Violet Verity in Margaret’s place— 

Of course one could not imagine her there, any more 
than she herself could understand the type of lovers who 
allow quite passionate kisses to the tune of 

“And if the others see, what matter then?” 

Then she would have found incredible. She did not 
even know that it meant that she herself was just far from 
cold-blooded. Caresses, to her, meant something much 
too disturbing. Even the least caress, even the caress by 
voice, she could not have endured in the presence of a 
third person. 


96 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Yet her girl Margaret—there she lounged! Mildly in¬ 
terested. Faintly flattered! Undisturbed by the near¬ 
ness of obviously roused young love. 

Men find it hard to believe in what utter torpor the 
senses of a girl can sleep. So often ignorance takes on the 
form of coquettishness, of deliberate trifling, even of zest¬ 
ful cruelty! 

In Margaret, ill-health, overstrain, and ungirlish 
“nerves” had so postponed the awakening that she could 
maltreat her adorer just as a child of two will pull to 
pieces some wretched insect. I thought . . . 

Suddenly I was startled into dropping my teaspoon. 

“Oh! you darling,” Margaret had exclaimed, quite ani¬ 
mated at last. “Oh, you sweet thing!” 

Only for an instant were we allowed to imagine that 
she might be addressing the young man. “He heard you 
say ‘you’! Thought you were talking to Yu-Yu,” 
drawled Margaret. “Look at the pet. He’s the nicest 
present Eric has ever given me.” 

The “pet” here thrust a head like an animated chrysan¬ 
themum from between two cushions. The pet, Margaret’s 
Pekinese, dragged out from the coverings its body of a 
tiny heraldic lion, shook its ringleted ears, goggled about 
with eyes of bulging, glossy black, and emitted an ar¬ 
peggio of snorts. 

“My precious,” coaxed Margaret in a tone that re¬ 
minded me of Violet Verity’s own voice cooing over her 
baby’s little, tea-cosy-shaped pillow. “My precious! did 
he think they were talking to Yu-Yu, then?” 

With another arpeggio of snuffles Yu-Yu thrust out his 


LOVE-MAKING A LA MODE 97 

wet, geranium petal of a tongue towards the face of his 
young mistress. 

“Ah, Peggy! No, no, dash it all! Don’t!” cried out 
Claude Oddley, sharply. “Put him down. Put the little 
brute down. Little beast!” 

“ ‘Brute’?” protested Margaret reproachfully over the 
pet dog’s head and dangling ears. “Go for him, Yu-Yu. 
Did he say you were a beast? Bite him! Bite him hard.” 

“Wouff,” exclaimed Yu-Yu’s tiny voice. 

His mistress put him tenderly aside upon the cushions. 
She felt for her chain and the jingling gadgets. Taking 
up the gold-framed miniature mirror, the jade-and-nacre 
lipstick, she proceeded to apply what her friend the 
Prince’s double had described as “red wax” to those petu¬ 
lant flower curves of her mouth. 

Even as she wielded the toys, Claude Oddley sought 
her hands again. 

“Peggy •” 

He knelt up by the divan. Huskily he persisted: 

“Must you keep putting me through it like this ? Must 
you? Couldn’t you ‘find yourself’ being sweet to me? 
Getting engaged to me before you are twenty-seven? I 
say, can’t you try and realize. . . . What about now? 
Good sort of date. . . . What about now?” 

“I must get a handkerchief,” exclaimed Mrs. Verity, 
rising in agitation. “Have you seen the—the—the new 
black glass set in my bedroom?” 

“Vi, where are you going?” demanded her daughter, 
flinging her head back onto the sofa end and, thus up¬ 
side down, gazing after our retreating figures. “Are you 


98 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


going? How pricelessly Victorian. Running away be¬ 
cause of us? For heaven’s sake go on with your tea. 
Yes; and can’t I have a small drink mixed? Don’t rush 
coyly from the room merely because Claude happens to 
be proposing. A habit of his; he honestly doesn’t know 
when he is doing it.” 

“It’s you who don’t know what you are doing. Look 
here, you might at least answer me. You might at least 
tell a fellow if you think you could ever . . . can’t you?” 

To that touchingly hoarse appeal, that languid drawl 
responded only: “How can any one start feeling intrigued 
before they have had a single cocktail and when they are 
only that minute over feeling like death warmed up with 
‘flu’? How can I know what I really want to do?” 

“When will you know? When will you tell me?” 

“What a worry you are, Odds. Later on.” 

“Will you think it over to-night, and let me have a 
word in the morning?” 

“My dear thing, any ‘word in the morning’ is always 
‘No.’ Besides, I can’t think of anything just at present, 
except what I have got to have packed to take abroad—” 

“Will you tell me in Nice?” 

“Oh; that’s what? A fortnight ahead. If you remind 
me perhaps I’ll tell you in Nice.” She tilted her head 
round again. “Righto, Violet, you needn’t be afraid of 
sitting out the rest of this affecting scene. I’m not going 
to accept, Claude, this minute!” 

As I gathered, the words conveyed to her mother ex¬ 
actly what they were meant to convey; namely: “If you 
tried to bar Cynthia I might ‘find myself’ marrying 
Claude. Then Cynthia, whom you disapprove of, could 


99 


LOVE-MAKING A LA MODE 

be with me as much as I chose. She’d be my sister-in- 
law. We should have to see that she was all right for 
money. Nobody would be able to stop it.” 

And, personally, I shared her mother’s sudden, chill¬ 
ing fear that Margaret presently (and for various rea¬ 
sons, for any reason but the One!) would “find herself” 
drifting into marrying this enslaved boy. 

Aloud she added to him: “Well, that’s that; isn’t it? 
You won’t worry me about this again for another fort¬ 
night. And then, perhaps, I will let you know what I 
have made up my mind to do when we are all in France.” 

7 

For the plan remained that in a couple of weeks the 
Oddleys should come on to the Veritys at Nice. 

Then, later, the Veritys could go on with Cynthia and 
Claude to Cairo. 

“Ah?” commented Uncle Tom presently, in tones 
fraught with many things he might think but could not 
say. His buccaneering eyes twinkled as if over schemes 
that were, even now, maturing. “That's their programme, 
is it?” 


CHAPTER VI 


% 


COCKTAILS ON THE YACHT 


<£ A ND Miss Verity? May I mix a cocktail for you?” 

“You may,” challenged Margaret. “I’d love 
one. I don’t care if it is against orders.” 

This was on Mr. Mount’s yacht as she lay in Nice 
harbour, a fortnight later. It was at his party on that 
sunshiny late December afternoon—destined to revolu¬ 
tionize the course of Margaret’s life. 


2 

In what a different setting did we find ourselves?, 
Darkly frowning London was worlds away. Difficult to 
believe that over there in Hill Street rain rained, fog 
fogged and people splashed about with umbrellas, damp 
furs, muddy shoes, red noses and cries of “Brrr! What 
vile weather for Christmas!” 

Escape to the Southern coast meant the usual trans¬ 
formation scene from murkiness to brilliance. 

All was brilliant. Sapphire skies, stabbed by snowy 
distant jigsaw of Alps. Greeny-grey ripple of olive 
groves. Orange trees loaded with golden fruit as a 
Christmas tree is set with coloured balls. Gay artificial- 

100 


COCKTAILS ON THE YACHT 


101 


ity of white towns along the Mediterranean’s edge! Cliff- 
high hotels, like siren’s rocks, vocal with dance music! 
Crescents of alluring shop windows! Vivid turf of parks 
and squares, bordered with plumy palms! Flower gar¬ 
dens, already bright with scarlet salvias, white bachelor’s 
buttons, geranium, marigold, carnation! Torrents of 
Bougainvillaea showered like wine spilled out over the 
vases and gateways of toyish pleasure houses. Here across 
the steep leafy uplands the Corniche road drew its daz¬ 
zling Z; between the blue Riviera sky, where gulls planed 
and swooped, and the bay, blue-shot with green, whereon 
rocked countless little French fishing-boats. Whereon, 
too, gleamed white and graceful as a sleeping swan that 
steam yacht of Mr. Mount’s. 

Here again I apologize (as I apologized apropos of Mr. 
Lloyd’s profession) for my own vagueness. Such yawn¬ 
ing gaps are there in my knowledge of men and the things 
that have to do with men! Never was woman more hope¬ 
lessly at sea when—well, at sea! Never was any one more 
incredibly ignorant of nautical terms and the working of 
ships, boats, the compass, the tides . . . Which is un¬ 
fortunate for this particular part of the story. Do not 
imagine that I did not appreciate it all; the freshness 
of the sea breeze, the indescribable feeling of freedom as 
of a gull that swoops above groves of graceful masts, 
the cool scent of the sea, the beckoning horizon, the clear 
jade depth beneath the ship’s side, the looping reflections 
in the still harbour water, the mysteries of knots, rigging, 
and all the activities of those blue-jerseyed, sun-browned, 
wholesome-faced sailors. These I enjoyed without under¬ 
standing and without the power to convey. . . . 


102 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


My friend, Mrs. Verity that sailor’s wife!—would have 
been far less hopeless than I at conveying, as she should 
have been conveyed, that beautiful boat, queening it 
among the rest of the shipping in the lovely harbour. 
Mrs. Verity, on this important afternoon, was not pres¬ 
ent. She had of course been invited to the bachelor tea- 
party. She had, however, pleaded fatigue after having 
stayed up so late at the Casino the night before. 

Abroad, even more so than in London, Margaret’s life 
was lived by electric light. Not for Margaret did the 
Riviera offer its sunshiny out of doors, its mountain walks 
to high-set snowy villages, its wild gay picture of land¬ 
scape and crimson sunset patterned by black parasol pines, 
its tideless, milk-warm bays tempting the swimmer all the 
winter through. Except to splash in the hottest days at 
Deauville, Margaret had not swum for years. Sea bath¬ 
ing “took it out of her.” For game she “couldn’t get up 
the energy.” Over here in a playground crowded by ar¬ 
dent players who bristle with golf clubs and who, at 
aperitif time, are to be found sitting happily at lunch with 
fur coats pulled on over tennis things, Margaret never at¬ 
tempted a round of golf. She seldom bothered even to 
look on at the tennis. 

The Rolls which she had brought over was always 
closed. Between the door of that car and the whirling 
glass-sectioned entrance to her hotel, a casino, or one of 
her favourite shops—this was all the fresh air that Mar¬ 
garet had found it necessary to breathe until we had 
stepped into the little boat wherein we were rowed across 
to young Mr. Mount’s yacht. 

Our host showed us all over her; showed us— 


COCKTAILS ON THE YACHT 


103 


Ah, well— 

Here is where I have to leave blanks, to be filled in by 
those who are, as children say, “good at” the subject. 
Personally I am so “bad at” it that were I to attempt to 
describe to you the beauties of the “Sweetheart II,” noth¬ 
ing would become apparent but the nakedness of the land. 
Namely, my ignorance. Yet I could appreciate the ex¬ 
quisite shapeliness of that vessel’s lines and her exquisite 
cleanness. What struck me most, perhaps, was the daz¬ 
zle of brasswork, the honeycomb order of everything, the 
smooth ivory of decks, the paint fresh as a petal. 

“As far as the beauty of the home is concerned,” I 
told young Mount, “I cannot imagine who originated the 
idea that woman’s place was the home. No mistress of 
a house keeps it as you keep this boat. No female staff 
exists who would have things shining as your men have 
them. I can imagine that men who live on yachts and 
launches and houseboats would soon forget there were any 
women in the world. They would learn so well to do with¬ 
out them.” 

“You think so?” said Mr. Mount. 

That pleasant, candid voice of his had the gift of keep¬ 
ing from one instead of expressing what he really thought 
himself. 

Remembering that the young man was going to be mar¬ 
ried, I feared I had been tactless in presupposing that he 
could forget there were women in the world. His fiancee, 
Mrs. Verity had reported, was in Rome staying with her 
own people for three months before her wedding. Hence 
Mr. Mount’s last bachelor cruise in the beautiful “Sweet¬ 
heart II.” 


104 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


3 

Margaret, nonchalantly, approved of that yacht. 

“I don’t so much mind being on any boat as long as 
she doesn’t move.” 

“She won’t move just yet. Miss Verity,” said our host. 

Margaret might have shown more interest had it been 
anybody else’s yacht. From the first she nourished a con¬ 
viction that young Mount needed snubbing. By some 
wordless code she had “got” that Mr. Mount remained 
completely undazzled and that in no circumstances, en¬ 
gagement or no engagement, could he be counted upon to 
join Miss Verity’s bodyguard. Miss Verity had at that 
time all the possessive, acquisitive vanity of the girl who 
sees men as scalps and slaves. So she was languid. She 
made it a favour that she had set her high-heeled foot 
(shod by a mere grille of slender white strap) upon his 
yacht. A favour that she condescended to loll on the 
cushioned seat of his deck house. A favour to leave the 
scarlet crescent impression of her lip salve on the rim of 
one of his teacups; a favour to drive one of his tiny, sil¬ 
ver forks into a cream cake looking like one of those 
clouds upon which gamble the upside down Cupids of 
a fragonard ceiling decoration. 

“Wallace scoured every patisserie in Nice to find cakes 
that he thought the young lady would like,” said Mr. 
Mount, turning that pretty smile upon her. 

Lackadaisically, Margaret asked: “Who is Wallace?” 

“My steward now. He used to be Charles’—my broth¬ 
er’s batman. His nurse. Everything in fact.” 

“Ah. He was in the train that morning. I believe 


COCKTAILS ON THE YACHT 


105 


I remember some one,” drawled Margaret, She put down 
the fork, leaving three-quarters of the fragonard cloud 
Choux a la creme on her plate. Bored with tea and party, 
she lolled back against the cushion, refused one of hi 3 
cigarettes and drew out one of her own rose-tipped and 
perfumed ones. 

Without seeming to look at her, I took her in as she 
was on that afternoon; well knowing (as I confess I did) 
that it would be long, very long before I saw Margaret 
\ erity again, and that it wa3 conceivably possible I might 
never again see her looking exactly as she looked then. 

There she lolled, next to her Uncle Tom; that sturdy, 
sun-burnt, lichen-haired, and twinklingly observant pi¬ 
rate. Opposite to her Mr. Mount’s clever and charming 
face was conventionalized into an expression so entirely 
neutral that he might have been glancing into a glass case 
of mounted and labelled specimens of tropic birds. 

Margaret wa3 all in white of a very Continental cut. 
She had a belted white silk knitted frock with the then 
fashionable pocket-flap over what was presumably her left 
breast. This was embroidered with a curly monogram 
—V.” About the skirt of the frock a frieze of rac¬ 
ing monkeys wa3 also embroidered by hand. She had 
pulled on, over this, a heavier loose coat of white jersey 
lined with something ultra-decorative by Poiret and hav¬ 
ing an immense collar and cuffs of white monkey fur. 
Her hat was a white corolla to her small, ailing face, 
tinted, as usual, over pallor and—yes, for the last time 
let us mention spots. The smart hat wa3 dragged down 
to those big, grey, wide-apart eyes, from which the heav¬ 
ily masticked lashes had robbed all softness, and much 


106 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


youth. In spite of all she did look very young, she did 
look very pretty, very wistful and wan; a drooping white 
rose, a clouding pearl. Do not forget, as details to this 
picture, the girl’s pearl string, her diamond arrow, her 
platinum wrist-watch, and that inevitable gold chain 
swinging her gadgets of cigarette holder, jade god, lucky 
pig, horseshoe, mirror, lipstick, powder container, eye¬ 
lash pencil and baby phial of perfume. 

Now, one unsophisticated touch about Margaret was 
that her perfumes so frequently varied. The finished 
woman of the world (that she imagined herself) hits upon 
her own melange and is faithful to that characteristic 
scent. But Margaret, one week, would use nothing but 
“Royal Fern.” Again, she would have a fancy for Cyn¬ 
thia’s essence of “Le Moment Apres.” Next she would 
drench herself with “Toute la Foret.” Then, putting 
them on together, she would add “Nuit de Chine.” She 
always put on far too much; too indiscriminately. It 
became oppressive. It filled that sealed deck house where 
we sat. 

“Do you find it a little bit close in here?” suggested 
Mr. Mount patiently, at last. “Would you like me to 
open a—” 

“Oh, please don’t open anything,” protested Margaret 
drawing up that fur collar. “How is it that as soon as 
wherever one is sitting gets cosy and warm somebody is 
certain to insist upon being heavily Spartan, hurling 
open windows, and letting in hurricanes of cold air? And 
just at sundown, when it turns so icy over here! Usually, 
it’s my mother who starts that. Now it’s you.” 

Her manner of pronouncing that “you” underlined her 
distaste for young Mr. Mount. 


COCKTAILS ON THE YACHT 


107 


He said, good humoredly resigned: “Oh, all right, Miss 
Verity. No air, by request. May I give you some more 
tea?” 

“No, thanks.” Margaret’s four-inch-high heel kicked 
against a certain large square dressmaker’s box of or¬ 
ange cardboard patterned with black butterflies, which lay 
on the rug at my feet. 

“More clothes for our Miss Margaret,” commented her 
Uncle Tom, cocking his eye upon this package, which, by 
the way, was not without its importance. “Well, it’s 
what one expects from you ladies. You bring over six 
huge innovation trunks so crammed with finery that it 
takes a crew of porters to move them. Then you haven’t 
got a stitch to wear and have to buy all new.” 

“Those aren’t mine. Uncle Tom,” Margaret told him. 
“Those are hers.” (A nod at me. I had been shopping 
with her.) “Of course one will have to get stacks of 
other dresses for Cairo,” Margaret said, “but I am wait¬ 
ing for Cynthia before I go into that seriously. I prom¬ 
ised Cynthia I wouldn’t choose a rag without her.” • 

“When do you expect that pal of yours?” 

“To-morrow.” 

“Oh.” 

“Yes, she’s arriving to-morrow by the Blue Train. 
There wasn’t room aftar all at our hotel for her and 
Odds, but I have booked rooms for them at the Negresdb. 
It will be fun when they come,” added Mafgaret, on a 
note of animation. “Eric said he might get away with 
them, and we can do everything together and it will be 
much more cheery—” 

“Well, you ladies, what about making a move soon?” 
put in her Uncle Tom with a flicking, lizard-tail glance 


108 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


at me. “Going on to the Casino as usual to-night, Mar¬ 
garet ?” 

“No, I have ordered the Rolls and we are driving over 
to the rooms at Monte after dinner. I want to try that 
new system of Cynthia’s again; just to give it another 
chance before I see her. I’m only seven thousand francs 
down now. Besides, before I dress and dine I want to 
go round to my little hat woman; she must keep a couple 
of hats I want Cynthia to see—” 

“Mr. Lloyd, you’ll let me give you a small drink be¬ 
fore you go ashore?” suggested young Mount, rising 
lightly to his feet. In the restricted space there showed 
more noticeably the contrast between his large make and 
the dainty lightness of his movements. Never was a 
man who managed so well a sizable body. He had, too, 
a feature so much prized in and by women; namely, re- 
markedly well-turned and slender ankles. Des attaches 
fines , say the French. I noticed the nice “set” of his 
throat, and of his wrist as he put out a hand to 
the bell. 

Enter in his white steward’s jacket the thick-booted, 
ineradicably military Wallace, bearing a large silver tray 
loaded with everything appropriate to the making of 
cocktails—ever a weakness of Margaret. 

4 

Other times, other drinks— 

Margaret’s mother, always a thirsty girl, had enjoyed 
what used to be called, voluptuously, a “nice” cup of tea. 
Boiling water poured on a generous supply infused the 


COCKTAILS ON THE YACHT 


109 


fragrant amber; at the bottom of the big-footed break¬ 
fast cup two massive squares of sugar were first dropped 
in; add an inch of fragrantly creamy milk, then tea; then 
the lacing of real cream. People have skulked into opium 
dens of Chinatown, have destroyed themselves on heroin 
and cocaine without experiencing the pleasure that Vio¬ 
let got from her cup of tea. 

From milk, too. Frothing, foaming, drunk warm and 
still sweet from the side of the tilted milking can in the 
field, it left its white crescent to be wiped from the upper 
lip. From iced lemonade; greeny-yellow as rock crystal. 
What nectar after a hard set, after haymaking! How 
insipid would any of these potions have seemed to Vio¬ 
let’s girl who was now remarking in a drawl that found 
it almost too much trouble to pass her reddened lips: 

“I hear they mix the most wonderful Martini at 
Aden. . . 


5 

Busy with chipped ice, lemons, mysterious coloured 
bottles and shaker, our host uttered his gentle voiced 
“And Miss Verity? May I mix a cocktail for you?” 

“You may. I’d love one,” Margaret answered with 
that defiant glance at her uncle. She knew that he knew 
the doctor’s veto against these frequent pick-me-ups. “I 
don’t care if it is against orders.” 

“One ‘Bronx’,” stipulated her Uncle Tom. “No more, 
my dear.” Young Mount silhouetted large and dark 
against white paint, mauve evening sky, masts of ship¬ 
ping outside, handed her the glass. 


110 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“If you like lemonade,” said Uncle Tom to whom I had 
confided this Sunday-school taste, “you ought to sample a 
deadly concoction they mix of old brandy and orange. 
You’d never think, to taste it, that it was anything but 
the most inocuous soft drink that ever happened. I won’t 
say anything about the effect.” 

“Do let me try it,” put in Margaret. “Mock lemon? 
How attractive. I must have one. No, I tell you what 
I’d like (she had finished her “Bronx”). I’d like a ‘rain¬ 
bow.’ I’ve never tried it. Fascinating to look at. Cyn¬ 
thia can mix them. She takes seven different liqueurs* 
Like the seven deadly sins, don’t you know. Quite Basil 
Dean. In coloured layers. Seven of them. All up a 
long glass. Let me try to mix one myself, Mr. Mount?” 

For once in her young life absolutely no attention was 
paid to Margaret by the man whom she happened to ad¬ 
dress. 

Mr. Mount had turned to the other man; was talking 
to him absorbedly. 

Something to do with the yacht. A stretch of that en¬ 
gine talk or sea talk which is Greek to me. 

I had my own preoccupation. 

I was deeply worried. Yes, in suspense and almost at 
my wit’s end. For we had come now to the most diffi¬ 
cult part of our arrangements for that afternoon. 

I was due to leave the yacht. 

6 

To leave. 

Unostentatiously, to fold my tent like the Arabs and 
silently steal away—those had been my orders. 


COCKTAILS ON THE YACHT 


111 


How to carry them out? 

There I was clustered with three other people in that 
deck house of a two-hundred-ton yacht lying off Nice. 
The late afternoon was slipping on its wrap of mauve 
twilight jewelled with lamps. And anyhow, wouldn’t the 
girl see? She had eyes. She was quick enough. 

How truly manlike to sketch out this scheme so dar¬ 
ing and bold in outline and to leave the woman of the 
party to fill in the details. All details seemed inevitable 
giveaways. 

Something had been murmured to me about leaving 
young Margaret at the tea-table when I was taken to look 
at—whatever object mysterious and nautical there might 
be. All very well. But how manage it? It’s at mo¬ 
ments like these that the person one wishes to leave de¬ 
velops a limpet-like quality. How could I get away from 
the girl? Several suspenseful moments went by. 

Feverishly I waited for the least opening to give Mar¬ 
garet the slip. 

Then Margaret played into my hands. 

While the men talked, while I glanced from them to 
the deck-house entrance, Margaret had been struck by 
a thought. While I finally desperately, with I know not 
what excuse of wanting to speak to Wallace, slipped out 
to join that fellow conspirator, Margaret turned to that 
phalanx of coloured bottles. 

Snubbed by Mr. Mount? Not the smallest notice taken 
of her expressed wish about that “rainbow” cocktail? 

Very well. Oh, very well. Here she would try mixing 
it herself. 

Quickly, angrily she took up the glass, she took up the 


112 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


first of those bottles. She slid the jewel-bright liquid 
carefully, carefully, as described by Cynthia, along the 
side of the glass. She turned to the next bottle. Like 
an inexperienced young bee fumbling amidst various col¬ 
oured flowers, Margaret hovered among those drinks. 

What wild mistake could she have made in the propor¬ 
tion of these? Goodness knows. Goodness only knows 
what witch’s broth she in her ignorance contrived to 
brew. That “rainbow” would not come properly striped. 
Pearly white, that liquid in her glass was not clear, but 
of a cloudy opalescence as when morning mist blurs the 
Channel skyline. It smelt like the best French coffee ming¬ 
ling with white violets. Like coffee it tasted; coffee and 
sweet sherry with a kick. 

“Very good,” thought Margaret, as she sipped, intend¬ 
ing to drain the glass before we others returned. 

She drained it. 

Swiftly there crept over her a peculiar sensation. Only 
once before she had felt it thus . . . helpless . . . sus¬ 
pended in mid-air. Outside a body which was hers, but 
which was no longer directed by her own will. That one 
other occasion had been at the dentist’s when she had 
been given some anaesthetic. She had put up her hand to 
show that she was still conscious. That is, she tried to 
put it out. Her lax hand had dropped into her lap and 
she had known no more. 

Now on the yacht it happened again. Suddenly she 
felt past everything except letting her lax hand drop 
empty glass and all into her silken lap—letting her smartly 
hatted head droop back against the cushions. 

Of what came after that, Margaret knew nothing. 


COCKTAILS ON THE YACHT 


113 


She never guessed of my hasty descent into the shore 
boat (when I felt like all the fugitive criminals there 
ever were). Margaret was not conscious of the throb¬ 
bing, purring pulse with which the “Sweetheart II” en¬ 
gines came to life. The dip of the boat, sudden crowd¬ 
ing up towards her of the eager waters, falling back 
of the coast and its endless chain of gleaming lights upon 
the dark neck of the Riviera—the shifting, on that dis¬ 
tant coast, of landmarks that, like stage scenery, stacked 
themselves up one in front of the other, that dwindled, 
that dipped at last below the horizon—lost—all lost upon 
Margaret. She never saw those last gleaming arrows that 
the guardian lights sent out over the water, which rose 
and fell more steeply under a freshening breeze. She 
didn’t see the livid pathway of wake behind her or the 
pointed reflection of stars in the heaving smooth slopes of 
waves around. 

At last she woke to stare aghast at a shaded lamp that 
rose, dipped out of sight, then rose again and dipped once 
more. 

Where? Where was she? 

Under blankets in a bunk. Still on board ship? 

Worse; in every fibre of her being moved that con¬ 
sciousness of swinging, pulsating rhythm which means 
that a ship is now well out at sea. 








» 











PART TWO—THE CURE 





















CHAPTER I 


STORJMS AT SEA 

1 

I N that minute “coming-round,” the world as she knew 
it fell away from Margaret. She was at the begin¬ 
ning of a fresh life. 

This she did not know yet. Still staring in bewilder¬ 
ment, she listened. . . . 

“Ker-swish” sang the seas outside, in that lullaby which 
brings horror or rapture to the voyager according to 
whether he be a good sailor or bad one. (You remember 
how Margaret had been made ill as a child even by voy¬ 
aging on a camel at the Zoo?) “Ker -swish! —WOP.” 

Wildly, the girl stared at that curtseying lamp, those 
swaying curtains, the shifting angles of cabin appoint¬ 
ments. 

“Oh,” she gasped aloud. 

There appeared, almost as if wedged in the cabin door¬ 
way, a four-square figure, a mat of snowy hair over a 
brown, benignantly enquiring face. 

“Well, Margaret; had a good sleep?” 

“Uncle Tom, what’s happened? Where am I?” 
“Where? On the ‘Sweetheart II,’ my dear.” 

Springing up from her bunk she put down her white- 
silk-stockinged feet from which her high-heeled shoes had 
disappeared. (“Swish. . . . Kerswish. . . . WOP.”) 

117 


118 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Realizing that the cabin floor first rose up to meet, 
and then abruptly dropped away from her, Margaret 
reeled. 

“What on earth has happened ? The yacht’s movingl” 

“She certainly is.” (Here the side of the boat quiv¬ 
ered to a watery sounding wallop.) “You’ve had a good 
long nap, Margaret. How far do you suppose we are 
out from land?” 

“From land?” Another steep tilt flung her against 
the bunk side. She clutched it. “Why—” 

“I’d better break it to you now, Margaret, that you 
may consider yourself off for a two months’ cruise. A 
sea voyage is what you were ordered, you know,” her 
Uncle Tom reminded her. “You’ll get to like it all right 
after you have found your sea-legs—” 

Imagine the look on the girlish face under her rum¬ 
pled brown hair! Her smart French hat swung this way 
and that on a hook at the other side of the cabin, to¬ 
gether with her white, fur-fringed coat. There Margaret 
swayed, clutching that mahogany ledge, a tall, lean, 
young figure of consternation. 

Off on a cruise? She? 

She, to whom anything to do with being on board ship 
was a nightmare? Smell of it, ceaseless rhythmic pulse 
of engines, tilt of timbers, semi-opaque green that alter¬ 
nately shrouds the porthole and falls away from a disc 
of grey—dreadful! The sense of swinging loose—the in¬ 
describable “lost” feeling given by that lift and sway, 
the knowledge that here is no solid Mother Earth to sup¬ 
port one, nothing, nothing but the thin barrier of metal 
and wood between the voyager and the unresting abyss 


STORMS AT SEA 


119 


of the alien element—all this (to some of us a delight) 
had always seemed to Margaret too bad to be true. 

And here she was, carried off into the swinging middle 
of the horror! 

“But it’s absurd. Ridiculous! It’s a joke! Any¬ 
how—” To reassure herself, she raised her voice: “Any¬ 
how, it has gone far enough now. So have we. Take me 
back. You must take me back. Turn back to Nice at 
once— Don’t you hear. Uncle Tom? You must stop the 
ship!” 

Here the “Sweetheart II” quivered to the greeting of 
another wave. 

Very dizzy, Margaret felt inside her head a miniature 
engine begin to pulse. (Result of that deadly, mistakenly 
mixed cocktail.) Frantically grasping the side of the 
bunk, she put her other hand up to her forehead. Al¬ 
most speechless with rage she felt as the situation began 
to clear. 

Swept off to sea ? Swept off without a word by this old 
autocrat who took everything for granted? This, to a 
young woman who for seven years had been mistress of 
her own destiny? 

“But—but—” Words failed the girl who at barely 
nineteen had her own income, establishment, staff, cheque 
book; her own mother a slave, subservient to her plans. 
“This is an impossible thing to do—” 

“If it is done, it is hardly impossible?” 

“But how dare you? It wasn’t even your own boat—” 

“That’s all right; lent to me by my young friend 
Mount.” 

“Mr. Mount? That odious man. That odious, odi- 


120 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


ous man,” shrilled Margaret. “I always did hate him. 
So did Cynthia. All the things she said about him . . . 
perfectly true. Not only that he was ineradically mid¬ 
dle-class, but ... oh, how right she was! He lent you 
the yacht? To let you behave like a common felon? Oh! 
—I’ll have you all arrested —” 

‘‘In mid-ocean?” 

“Wireless!” gasped his niece wildly. “Wireless, or 
something. Did you think I shouldn’t be missed if you 
carried me off? They’ll send to look for me—” 

“And who are ‘they’?” 

“Everybody,” gulped Margaret, swaying like some frail 
garment on a clothesline tossed by the breeze. Could 
she have said who “everybody” was? Confused pictures 
rose of the bodyguard, Claude . . . “They’ll all see that 
horrible yacht has gone from the harbour . . . Our Em¬ 
bassy . . .” 

Suddenly she stopped storming. Her face had taken 
on that unmistakable greenish pallor as of a guelder rose. 

“Better lie down again now,” suggested her uncle, 
standing with sturdy legs braced apart, eyes kindly, but 
firmly, upon her own. 

“You dared . . . you’ll be sorry . . . infamous be¬ 
haviour . . . criminal!” cried Margaret, again wildly 
staring round that well-appointed cabin, clean and glossy 
as the inside of a new, water-colour paint box. Already 
ivory-smooth paint, chestnut-shiny wood, mirror, carpet, 
curtains, shut-up washstand, and bright metal “bits” 
swirled in circular stripes like the rings of red, blue, white, 
green on a swiftly spinning top. Through that giddy, 


STORMS AT SEA 


121 


circular movement drove the tilt, the strong gay swing of 
the ship through the water. All around grew up stronger 
and stronger the sense, the smell, the whole dreaded atmos¬ 
phere of life on the ocean wave. 

Feeling exceedingly ill (though nothing to what she 
was going to feel), she collapsed again upon the bunk 
from which she had sprung. She heard herself shriek 
savage, incoherent scraps of sentences: “Never for¬ 
give . . . You’ll pay for this . . . Absolutely illegal! 
Even if I am under twenty-one . . . Odds will take it 
up to the House of Lords . . . You’ll see—” 

But here seasickness gripped her in earnest; she was 
incapable of any but one more word. As she sank into 
that nightmare of nausea she hurled at her uncle the 
accusation: 

“Kidnapping !” 


2 

This word that old, bold mate of Henry Morgan ruled 
out from the first. Long afterwards when questioned 
about the “adventure,” he would protest. 

“Kidnapping! What ideas ladies get into their heads. 
What a way to put it.” 

One notices in men their real distaste for what we should 
consider the honester speech of women. Here was an in¬ 
telligent, kindly, resourceful man quite ready to sweep 
away all scruples in a good cause. Willing to commit a 
benevolent crime. But not prepared to call it kidnap¬ 
ping. Call it interfering for the girl’s own good. Call 


322 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


it taking the part of her natural guardian since her father 
was dead, her mother was wax in her hands, and since she 
had never had a firm elder brother. But kidnapping? 

Perish the word. 

(What a sex!) 

As for the other man involved—the lender of the yacht 
■—the young friend, Mount. 

His explanation was that something which occurred 
some years ago in South America had made it quite im¬ 
possible for him to refuse the favour which Mr. Lloyd 
had asked of him when we all came over to the South of 
France. He, Mr. Mount, was so very deeply indebted 
to Mr. Lloyd for some service which the old gentleman 
had done him. 

What it was he did not divulge. Might be anything 
from hushed-up murder to coveted introduction. Some¬ 
how I feel that the elder man did intervene to save the 
younger in some serious difficulty . . . how can one tell, 
with men? 

“I was only too glad, you see, to let him have the 
‘Sweetheart II 5 for a couple of months or so. I didn’t 
ask any questions about why he wanted her particularly.” 

“Because you knew, Mr. Mount! Because you knew 
exactly what was going to happen.” 

“Not exactly. Oh, no; you can’t say that.” 

“Roughly you knew. You provided your yacht, your 
crew, your Wallace to help that old man in his kidnapping 
scheme—” 

“Not at all,” deprecated Mr. Mount. “You’ve got it 
all wrong. How badly I’ve explained matters!” 

(What a sex!) 


STORMS AT SEA 


12 3 


3 

To return to the wretched Margaret. 

She afterwards declared that no human soul could be 
expected to tell how many days they were at sea, when 
they were thoroughly, unromantically, violently seasick 
every moment that they were not sunk in feverish 
slumbers broken by that “swish, wop! stagger” that went 
on, on. 

Into that ghastly cabin stole spells of daylight. She 
knew also spells when the lights were on. 

Then there were the pitch-black spells. She could not 
count how many of each there were when everything in 
her world was ceaselessly tilting first one way, then the 
other. All the time her cabin seemed to rise, rise, rise 
like a Handley-Page rising into the air, to leave half of 
Margaret atop of some watery Alp and then abruptly to 
sink (“WOP!”) with the other half Margaret to the 
uttermost depths of some fathomless ravine. 

Day after day, night after night, this went on and 
on. -« * . 

Or so she thought, when she was able to think anything 
at all. Rage left her. Resentment left her. Everything 
left her. She was just too ill to feel anything but ill. 

She didn’t know which were meals which she faintly 
refused, and which were odd snacks of biscuits and cham¬ 
pagne to keep herself going. 

She didn’t know when it was her uncle who tapped at 
her prison door and came in to give her a look and an 
unheeded word of cheer, and when it was the devoted and 
handy Wallace. 


124 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Time went ... In spasms she felt she was getting on 
towards thirty, forty, fifty years of age. . . 

Once, catching sight of brown hair tossed across her 
face and dangling down over the rug, she wondered why 
it had not turned grey? 

Lying helpless in that bunk, growing more feeble with 
every whop and flop, feeling as Claude might have said, 
like death warmed up, she could not think in terms of 
nights and days. 

There seemed to have been time to get to Tahiti and 
back, when— 

Came the night of the storm. 

4 

With a start Margaret woke. 

That pulse of the engines had suddenly stopped. The 
steady throb had gone on and on until the miserable, 
sea-sick girl had ceased to hear it, and how it had stopped 
dead. But the yacht, rocking more violently than ever, 
was being tossed by a toy on those Alpine waves. And 
suddenly the cabin was invaded by gruff unknown voices, 
and somehow it was imparted to the dazed and weakened 
passenger the news that she must get up on deck. 

Did she catch the word “weak”? Was it her imagina¬ 
tion that they told her that the “Sweetheart II” was 
sinking fast? She thought (if you can use the word 
thought for a film of chaotic impressions now to be reeled 
off through her mind) : “Thank goodness! I shall be 
drowned in five minutes. It won’t take longer.” 


STORMS AT SEA 


125 


Hands crowded rough wraps upon her . • . hands 
gripped her upper arm, hustled her up the companionway. 

On deck she found herself in a hullaballoo of shrieking 
winds, of scudding indigo sky, of blackness, roughness 
and an all-possessing sense of storm—pierced by a sud¬ 
den thought that simmered up from some long-forgotten 
bedrock of her being. 

“I am a sailor’s daughter! . . . Behave well in danger. 
. * . Whatever happens . . . keep cool . . . because I 
am a sailor’s daughter.” 

Another thought seemed blown away by the gale that 
dashed spray into her eyes and face. The shouting out 
of orders she heard as if at a great distance. Then close 
to her ear her uncle’s voice: “Put your arms round my 
neck.” Obediently she put out her arms, felt herself en¬ 
circled, picked up, carried—where? 

5 

Now a little light-headed she lay, with something rock¬ 
like firm under her nape, something rough and warm all 
over her. Endlessly she ascended and descended those 
heaving Alps; now immeasurably steep. Once with an 
effort she got her eyes open and stared straight up. 

Nothing to be seen but the black range of waves rising 
and falling against an indigo rolling waste of cloud; a 
rift here and there of ice-black sky was jewelled with 
points of a dancing star. She shut her eyes; from climb¬ 
ing and descending, climbing and descending she sank 
again into a stretch of unconsciousness. Then half awake 


126 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


she started with the thought: “We are shipwrecked . . a 
boats . . . men rowing * • . going to be drowned. Swim 
for dear life.” 

Involuntarily, mechanically, she tried to fumble for the 
fastening of her skirt, but could not disentangle her hands 
from the folds of whatever rough covering it was that had 
been tucked about her so that all but her little wet face 
remained perfectly warm. 

Like a kitten that seeks its mother her hand moved 
about. Then quite suddenly came the slipping of that 
other hand into hers and the clasp—not hard, but firm, 
warm and of an exceeding comfort that held her fingers. 

She thought that she was in a dream, she thought now 
that she knew where she was. 

“In our own drawing-room at Hill Street. The divan 
how springy. £ Plu’ . . . down for the first time to-day. 
• . . Too much trouble to open my eyes. . . . Go on 
dozing.” 

Drowsing, numbed yet warm, she was pervaded by the 
sleepy thought: 

“How different Claude’s hands are—never thought he 
had got hands so nice to hold. Not limp. So magnetic, 
as Cynthia said.” 

All lax her fingers lay in the clasp (as she thought) of 
Claude Oddley. . . . 


6 

Roughly she was shaken out of that dream, and the 
whole of her relaxed frame jolted to a grinding shock. 
As, when on a train journey at night, the sleeping 


STORMS AT SEA 


127 


traveller, upon pulling up at the platform, scarcely knows 
(thus jolted violently from slumber) whether it is a col¬ 
lision, or merely Crewe Station! So Margaret, when the 
boat grounded, did not know whether it meant death on 
the rocks or land. Grinding of keel against beach went 
through her. Then through noise of wind and wave she 
caught her own startled, “What is it?” and the cheerfuk 
“All right, Margaret, we’ve struck the island now.” 

Against the sky rose black heights that actually did 
not fall. By the boat side a figure appeared tall. 

Now . . . again she felt herself lifted, carried away 
as if she were some limp and dangling puppet Claude dolL 
Then, blessed respite! she was laid down somewhere on 
firm ground. 

Dark . . . quiet . . . safe. The air was still wet o® 
her face, still riotous in her hair, but she was out of the 
wind’s fury, out of the breakers’ crash. These noises 
became a rhythmic lullaby to the deep, untroubled, normal 
sleep into which Margaret sunk at last. 


CHAPTER II 


ISLE OF BEAUTY 

1 

W HEN, after hours of oblivion, she stirred she 
found that while her face and neck were chilly, 
her feet and legs, as far as the knee, were being 
glowed upon by some strong warmth. Like a baby she 
rolled half-consciously towards the warmth. Warm! . . . 
Good! . . . Ah, delicious! . . . She dozed again. . . . 

Then she gradually began to wake up in earnest, to the 
wonder: “Which way round is my bed? Which way am 
I facing?” 

Shut-eyed still, Margaret felt she was lying upon some¬ 
thing warm, though hard. “Where am I?” 

Immediately she realized where she was not. Not at 
home, nor in the hotel at Nice, nor in the lit-salon travel¬ 
ling from Paris. Nor, thank heaven; on that awful 
yacht. With one hand she felt what lay beneath her. 

It was curiously yielding, gritty, warm to touch. 
Sand? 

Here she opened her eyes and with a thrill of pure de¬ 
light saw blue sky, golden-white beach edged with red 
rocks and fringed by palm trees, a blue and laughing bay 
all empty. . . * Queer, that the immediate thought should 
be this— Good heavens! Was it, could it be . . . her 
desert island? 

For the child has yet to be found who has not dreamed, 
123 


ISLE OF BEAUTY 


129 


secretly, of escape from his everyday home to his beau¬ 
tiful Isle of the Sea. 

Far, far away it lies; apart from meals, bedtime, “dry 
stockings!” drier lesson books, and the tedious tribe of 
grown-ups who (apparently without memory for their 
own childhood) impose their trammels upon the young. 

“Pleased to ruin 
Others’ wooing! 

Never happy in their own—’* 

That is how we appear to these dreamers of from five 
to fifteen years old. Some of them run older than that. 
Some younger. All cherish a yearning. And, since they 
cannot actually take ship for their perilous seas and fairy¬ 
lands forlorn, they soon find the subtler route. j 

Blue, bluer than any known waters gleams the lagoon 
that rings their Paradise; incredibly remote from Brigh¬ 
ton Beach, Llandudno, Scarborough or any seaside to 
which their grown-ups have ever dragged them. More 
densely wooded than the Park in which they are hauled 
for “walks”—more vividly green than the billiard-table 
cloth at Grandfather’s—more potently fragrant than the 
inside of chemists’ shops to which they must accompany 
the shopping Nanny— How much fairer than these 
concrete aspects of life, and yet made up of all of them! 
Such is that Island of the average child’s imagination. 

2 

Like every other child, little Margaret Verity of that 
Sussex cottage had cherished that vision of her own, her 


130 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


darling secret isle. Ah, it had been wonderful to her! 
(All our islands are wonderful to us; crammed with treas¬ 
ure, vivid with adventure, mysterious with dream, dear 
and congenial with the fellowship of One, all according to 
our heart’s desire.) Here, before Margaret’s bemused 
eyes, stretched this picture of the actual place. 

Yes, blue and gold and foliage-green were as she had 
seen them in a thousand dreams, and on fifty novel jackets. 
Dazed, bewildered and lost, she gazed at that bright land¬ 
scape. She felt as one imagines souls must have felt when 
landed by Charon on the further bank of Lethe’s stream. 
But when she moved, clasped her hands, stretched out her 
long limbs, Margaret realized that she was still entirely 
alive—even a little stiff. Tucked all about her she found 
a man’s coat; dark-blue, heavy, and thickly fur-lined. 
This had been drawn up nearly to her neck. She put it 
aside, and then saw how extraordinarily she was dressed. 

Over the white frock with its frieze of galloping 
monkeys she was wearing a thick navy-blue jersey, harsh 
to the touch, a world too wide for her and with scarlet 
streaks of something across the chest. Under the jersey 
jingled her bunch of gadgets. She put up her hand, found 
pearls still around her neck, tiny platinum watch still 
at her wrist. The watch had stopped at twelve o’clock— 
on what night or day, who knows? 

Below the jersey Margaret found she had got on a 
short, rough, brown tweed skirt. Not one she had ever 
seen before. Below the tweed hem and the edge of a white 
tricot that showed, came a pair of stout woollen golf 
stockings (her mother’s?). These ended in the oddest 
footgear that had ever covered the girl’s sizable but 


ISLE OF BEAUTY 131 

shapely feet—a pair of rubber ankle boots, as worn by 
seamen. 

With an astonished glance at these Margaret rose to 
her feet. 

She stared again about her: saw that the rocks that 
ran out into the water were roseate red as Devon soil. 
Their walls bounded the little creek. Still walking stiffly, 
she moved uncertainly, looking about her down the firm, 
sloping, blond sand, sequined with tiny glistening frag¬ 
ments of shell that winked in the sunlight. High-water 
mark looked as it looks on every beach that she ever 
touched; that is to say, it showed the usual garland of 
mussel shells mingled with dark thrown-up weed, drift¬ 
wood, halves of sea urchin, light straws, and the inevitable 
frail, white skeleton of some seabird to which there clung 
still a few damp feathers. Only six inches away the beach 
was flounced with lace-white foam. Behind Margaret an¬ 
other rosy rock towered high against the blessedly clear 
heavens, where gulls swooped and called. She found that 
she had been sleeping in a cave of that rock; this had 
shaded her head, even while morning sunshine, creeping 
up to warm her face, had flung an indigo half moon of 
shadow on to the goldy white sand. 

“The Island! Or an island,” Margaret murmured be- 
wilderedly. 

“Lord, how it looks about” as Miranda had said of 
another castaway on another island. 

It was not until later that she caught sight of all the 
luggage with which she had been cast away—that carton 
box of mine which she had kicked underfoot in the deck 
house, and which held the roughest of rough necessities. 


132 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


She moved about. As generally happens to travellers who 
have recently come off a moving ship, the land still 
seemed a little to sway and to tilt about. But it was land; 
blessedly solid. Blissfully warm, the sunshine went 
through Margaret’s jersey, through her frock, right 
through to her comforted bones. 

Two feelings were now taking hold upon her—she was 
very hungry, and she was alone. 

She thought: “Where are—where’s every one? Where 
are the people?” 


3 


People. 

Remember, for a moment, what mobs of people had sur¬ 
rounded Margaret for the last eight or nine years, then 
you will get an idea of one astounding change that was 
to remould her. 

Crowds had been always and for ever about the girl. 
Crowds in streets, theatre, restaurants, club. Her Hill 
Street staff; her bodyguard. The anonymous “surround” 
that opens doors, finds corner seats in railway carriages, 
works lifts, books reservations, drives taxis, copes with 
luggage for a girl in Margaret’s circumstances. Always, 
wherever she had turned her languid, unseeing glance, 
there had been “people” to anticipate her every wish, from 
switching on lights to preparing baths for mademoiselle. 
Helping hands had been spread out, as on the many arms 
of an Indian goddess. And always the speckle of people’s 
attentive faces, everywhere the buzz of people’s eager 
voices: 


ISLE OF BEAUTY 133 

“Are yoa being attended to, madam? . . . Taxi? 
Taxi, miss? . . J* 

“Shall I tell yoar car to wait or to call again in ten 
minutes’ time? ... May I trouble you to the next de¬ 
partment? . . . Have yoa given your order? . . . The 
lift will be down again in one moment, miss. . . . Your 
chauffeur has just this instant gone for the car. • . . 
There will be some one to serve you immediately. ... Is 
anybody attending to you? . . J 9 

“I will send the femme de chambre. . . .” 

“Have you everything that you require? . . . Vow 
denrez, mcdemoueUe? . . . Certainly, madam ... I will 
see to it immediately, madam. . . . Oh, mad Am, I am ex¬ 
tremely sorry that you should have been kept waiting 
like this. . . . Could you tell me which was the gentle¬ 
man who booked your order, madam? . . . And be shall 
be sent to you at once. ... I will make enquiries, madam. 
. . . This lady here will serve you. ... If you would 
kindly ring when you are ready. . . . Et mademoi- 
tdlef . . .” 

Invariably there had been this chorus to life 5 * play. 

Even when there was nobody else, there had always 
been Cynthia. (“Peggy darling, where to, now? 55 ) Or 
Claude OddLey. (“I say, Peggy- what time may I come 
for you? 55 ) Or her mother. (“Margaret, my pet, can I 
do anything? 55 ) 

Here, for the first time, there was nobody. No voices, 
no bands. No one to whom to turn. No Violet. No 
Cynthia. No bodyguard. No Odds. At that moment 
she did not even recall those names, they had fallen away 
from her. She only realized that there was nobody there. 




134 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


And for a very long time there was going to be nobody 
—except that one other person. 

4 

But she hadn’t seen him yet. She saw only her solitary 
shadow, her own single chain of rubber-soled footmarks. 

Wildly she thought: “But the fur-lined coat that was 
put over me—somebody mqst have been there? Some¬ 
body must have been wrecked here with me? Then where 
are they? Has everybody gone? Left me?” 

No reply. No sign of other life but the airy squadron 
of white birds that planed and nose-dived far above the 
cliff. Empty sea, uninhabited shore. Beautiful blank 
bay a-play with ripples. But not a sail. Not a soul. 

“And I’m hungry. And I’m so frightfully hungry!” 

Years had passed since Margaret Verity had felt that. 
Not since days when she had tramped through the worst 
of English weathers over the Sussex Downs to some dis¬ 
tant farm to bring back a sitting of eggs for her mother, 
and when she had burst in—red with rain and exercise!— 
to fall upon a wolf’s tea. 

Ritz dwellers do not know that primitive urge. 

“Heavens, but I am famished! Empty as this place. 
Starving!” 

Starving, with nothing but seaweed to eat, she stood 
feeling as if she had fasted for weeks . . . actually it 
wasn’t more than five minutes since she had opened her 
eyes upon this fairy place. 

Her helpless eyes gazed up upon the seagulls that de¬ 
scribed invisible festoons in the blue. Gulls were all right; 


ISLE OF BEAUTY 


135 


they knew how, when and where to swoop upon their food. 
It was only she, the unprepared, untrained, unarmed, 
underdeveloped, overcivilized human being who found her¬ 
self baffled, defeated. What could she do? What? 

5 

How reassuringly human was the sound that cut the 
ominous quiet of the creek! Margaret, catching her 
breath to listen, heard—somebody whistling? Whistling 
quite softly the gay French fox-trot tune : 

“Oh, Mauricot, Mauricot, Mauricot — 

Pourquoi ta mere t’a-t-elle fait si beau?” 

WThistling meant people. People meant food—Mar¬ 
garet’s one preoccupation which, for the instant, shut 
out all other anxieties. She must have something to eat. 
. . . Breathlessly she peered about those rocks set like 
pieces of stage scenery across the wings. They shut her 
out on the right from this unseen person who was whistling 
just as a man always does whistle when he is grooming a 
horse or himself, washing down a car, whittling a bit of 
wood, doing anything mechanical that occupies hands and 
frees mind. 

The whistling ceased. The scratch of a match being 
struck cut through the air. There was silence. Then 
there was an “Ah!” of relief from Margaret, who had 
found her way. She had discovered the narrow corridor 
which ran between the rocks; she made her way over its 
carpet of sand and the usual beach dressing of drifted 


136 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


cockle-shells, seaweed, twigs, straws and tiny bits of crab, 
and now she found herself at the entrance to the other 
beach. 

This second cove was also walled by red rocks; but ah, 
relief; it was not empty. 

The man who had been whistling was now half lying 
face downwards on the sand. 

What Margaret first saw of him was that pair of long 
legs with trousers rolled up to the knee. Then his white- 
shirted torso, then the back of his dark head. He was 
intent upon the stones that he had just built up into that 
roughly constructed hearth. In its embrasure a handful 
of driftwood, twigs, placed crosswise, had been set alight. 

Fire, however weakly flickering, suggested cooking! 
Food! The famished Margaret ran forward. Her rubber 
soles crunched on shell; the man turned, rising to his knees 
to look round at her, but there was a second’s delay be¬ 
fore Margaret recognized him. 

Last time she had seen him he had been all sleek and 
smart in his dark suit with the thinnest of white lines; 
he had been wearing, also, the latest and rightest thing in 
grey spats, waistcoats, silk shirts, collars, beautifully 
knotted black ties and pearl pins; a dim-mauve carnation 
had bloomed in the buttonhole of the host of that yacht 
party. 

Now here he was, a castaway with her on this desolate 
beach. Rumpled hair, shirt sleeves, no braces (just a 
broad belt of webbing, with pockets in it, clipping his well- 
defined waist), no collar, and with his shirt showing where 
the line of light sunburn divided his throat above the collar 
line from the V of fair skin below it. 


ISLE OF BEAUTY 137 

These details were not to be taken in by a girl obsessed 
by hunger. 

All she saw was the bonfire, all she thought of was food 
to be provided by the fire-maker. 

“Mr. Mount—!” 

“Oh, good morning, Miss Verity.” 

That young man’s pleasant, casual greeting seemed to 
intensify the morning’s nightmare quality. 

He spoke as if this were the crowded Promenade des 
Anglais at Nice, on which they were meeting the morning 
after a Casino party—instead of after a wreck from which 
they two had escaped with their lives. . . . Without an¬ 
other word, he stooped again, tending his fire. 

“You’re here!” gasped Margaret. “Where’s every¬ 
body else . . . ? Where are we? What’s hap¬ 
pened?” 

Young Mount answered cheerfully as before, but with¬ 
out looking round at her again. His eyes were all for the 
flickering flame taking hold of those twigs. 

“Breakfast is going to happen next, I hope.” 

“Ah!” broke from the ravenous Margaret, caring little 
to whom it was she was speaking, whether it was this Mr. 
Mount whom she had always rather disliked or whether 
it was one of the sailors. She couldn’t yet think of any¬ 
thing but her own starvation. “Breakfast! What?” 

“Fish,” explained the young man, simply. With his 
right hand still feeding the flames with those chips of dry 
wood, he held out the other, and pointed to a flat stone a 
couple of yards up the beach. Upon this lay a metallic, 
glittering line. These trout had half an hour before 
been darting and frolicking in their brook. 


138 THE CLOUDED PEARL 

“Will you clean them and wash them out, Miss Verity, 
please?” 

“I?” exclaimed Margaret blankly. “Clean those fish?” 

“Well, Pve got the fire to do, you see. I left my knife 
by them.” 

“Do you mean I shall have to cut them open?” de¬ 
manded Margaret wildly. 

“Ah, good!” exclaimed Mr. Mount—not to her at all, 
but to the catching twigs. 

Hunger tore at Margaret like some dog that jumps up 
against a closed door. 

The right thing, of course, was for this young man to 
clean and prepare and cook those fish for her as soon as 
was humanly possible. But, as he said, he had the fire to 
see to. Margaret couldn’t wait for the right thing. 
Those fish (there were only six of them) must be got 
ready. And if he couldn’t do it at once— 

6 

At any moment of any day twenty-four hours before 
that storm, Margaret would have told herself that she 
would rather die than touch those horrible-feeling, cold, 
smooth, dead, raw trout. As for seizing a man’s jack¬ 
knife and slitting them open— 

Far sooner than die, sooner than wait another moment, 
she found herself (with those delicate long hands of hers, 
on the pointed nails of which gleamed the pink polish of 
her last manicure) performing that grisly operation. 
Memories of it came to her from that Sussex kitchen. 
(Hideous job that it always was, is, and shall be; yes, 


ISLE OF BEAUTY 139 

she did it.) “Water,” she thought. “They’ve got to be 
washed now.” 

Aloud, she gave the order: “Water!” 

The fire-maker’s voice replied: “Yes, very fortunately, 
there is.” His hand, grasping seaweed with which to 
damp down those flames, waved towards the rocks up- 
cove. Water fell in a crystal curve from the top of those 
rocks. A small mountain stream, taking its last gay 
leap, it glittered in the sunshine about ten feet above a 
man’s height, splashed into the rock groove which it had 
hollowed for itself, and so rippled its way out to the bay. 
At the foot of this cascade Margaret frenziedly washed 
out those trout. Then she washed blood and scales from 
her hands. Next, filling her hands, she drank. Heavens, 
what a draught! She, sipping her way through the wine 
lists of Europe, had found nothing so delicious as this 
sharply pure stream water. Again filling that cup of her 
hand, she plunged her face into it. Ice cold . . . refresh¬ 
ing . . . making her hungrier than ever. Margaret felt 
for her handkerchief to dry her face. No handkerchief. 
Left under the bolster of her bunk. 

“I say, there is enough wood ash to do those trout in 
now, Miss Verity.” 

Miss Verity, shaking off her face drops of the first cold 
water that had touched it for years, rubbed it hastily 
against her woollen sleeve, then, catching up those fish by 
their tails, hurried to the fire. 

The wood was crackling, blazing, causing outlines of 
the boulder that backed the hearth to flicker as if seen 
through tears. Already coils of wood smoke began to 
make their way in spirals out to sea. Long, long ago 


140 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Jack Verity had told his child that the two first, crucial 
preoccupations of a shipwrecked man when cast ashore 
are water and fire. Now that came back to her. 

Under Mr. Mount’s direction she found herself (not 
altogether too unhandily) laying among dove-grey-and- 
glowing salmon-pink wood ash those six trout. 

As far as Margaret was concerned, those fish might 
have dropped like the Israelite’s manna from the pellucid 
skies above. Or they might have walked up the beach 
like the oysters in the ballad of “The Walrus and the 
Carpenter,” without surprising her. She asked Mr. 
Mount nothing. . . . 

Long afterwards he gave the account of how, on that 
first morning, he caught those brook trout, gipsy-poacher- 
fashion, with his hands. “Just a knack,” he said lightly 
(inwardly pleased enough with this gift). “Poor old 
Charles, my brother, had it too. We used to do a lot 
of it together, when we were kids. ... I don’t think it’s 
a thing you learn. You get to know, instinctively, the 
run of the water where they are, the look of the stones 
that they get under. You start by putting your arms 
out, wide, in a semi-circle, so. Then you close in and 
close in and close in on them gradually until the beggars 
are under your fingers, like this . . . then you work them 
and work them, like this, until you get them between the 
gills; so . « . then, the fish is yours. . . .” That morn¬ 
ing Margaret wouldn’t have felt interested; she was past 
feeling anything but naked hunger. 

She fell upon a wolf’s breakfast. 


ISLE OF BEAUTY 


141 


7 

Appetite had been the one luxury which money had 
swept out of this girl’s reach- As a quite new young heir¬ 
ess she had stuffed at lavishly ordered meals; and revelled 
in sweets between those meals. Followed the period of 
nibbling, instead of eating, salted almonds instead of 
liqueur, chocolates and drinks between nibbles. Later, the 
period when lunch and dinner had become mere excuses for 
showing off before head waiters. 

“How disgraceful that a place like this should actually 
have a reputation for wonderful cooking!”—thus Mar¬ 
garet Verity, when seated at a perfectly appointed table 
for two at some caravanserai of the minute. “Cooking? 
With everything absolutely uneatable? Odds, just get 
them to take this all away. And mind they talk to the 
chef about that sauce- I suppose they’d call him a chef? 
See he’s told that Mis3 Verity has had nothing fit to eat 
the last three times she’s been here. What else is there? 
Nothing on the menu that I can touch. No Truite 
meumeref I want to know why there isn’t? No! Not 
worth waiting to have anything specially cooked. Sure 
to be disgusting. Come along, Odds. We’ll tell every¬ 
body in London about this place: warn all our friends 
never to set foot in it if they don’t want to be poisoned. 
And, Odds, send them back for my Httle bag with my 
Treasury-note case and those tickets. I left everything 
on the table in my haste to escape from what they’ve the 
nerve to call a ‘restaurant’—” 

This exhibition had taken place in days only just be¬ 
fore that tea on the “Sweetheart II.” There Miss Verity, 


142 THE CLOUDED PEARL 

toying with her Choux a la creme, had shown off for the 
last time* 

Followed that witch’s potion, that hell-broth of an igno¬ 
rantly mixed cocktail. . • . 

Came that sea trip. . . . 

Came those nights and days of seasickness, which had, 
to put it brutally, spring-cleaned a misused girlish system. 
They had done away with the overload of wrong foods 
and of drinks which had brought to the young body 
neither nourishment nor pleasure. Followed that enforced 
fast. 

Now here was Margaret, so to speak, swept and 
garnished. 

Even while Mr. Mount (also exceedingly hungry) dis¬ 
patched his breakfast, he must have had an eye for the 
spectacle of Miss Margaret Verity, the pampered gour¬ 
met, crouched there on a boulder close to the bonfire with 
her hands full of trout which she herself had just cooked 
in the ashes. 

The first trout was so hot that Margaret dropped it 
with a little cry. Gingerly, greedily, she picked it up 
again from the sand. She peeled off sandy, blackened 
outer skin. Impatiently she waited for exquisite inner 
flesh to cool. Quite possibly she never realized that she 
was blowing at it like a barbarian? Then she ate. Her 
large eyes were full of ecstasy. Rapturously, silently, 
she savoured this meal of a savage, eaten as a savage eats, 
in savage surroundings of beauty and loneliness. She ate 
without pausing to dip the trout, as did her companion, 
into a residue of salt in the fissure o| the rock. She 
scarcely remembered that she had a companion, she did 


ISLE OF BEAUTY 


ns 


net realize that he had a Hewed her four of the 17 trout, 
taxing an17 ova for himself. Without a word to him. she 
dev^ure;1 the last ambrosial atom. 

Then she drew in a draught of that heartening' air. In 
it were min .gied is lowers in a nosegay are mingled j smell 
of one sea, sued of wood fire, and that pervading, poign¬ 
ant. aromatic fragrance which, she was afterwards to 
knew as characteristic of this mysterious island—special 
rre.MTTg e Tan by a Lovely T and. as a Bre tt y woman wears 
a frvw if sesrfc. 

"Hened^r ~ breathed Margaret. 

Then at last her intelligence woke up. It had been 
drugged Tnr bv bunker, therr bv satisfying hunger. Xow 
it wished to ask a scare of questions. 

T f onward upon her boulder she began anxiously: 

“Mr. Maunn— r 9 ~ 

Mfin Ferity?* 

He Looked straight hack at her. 

S 

There tw i s ts a theory that those who have something 
to Vdt* cannot Look straight at a questioner. Haiders 
of hns theory ha *e never been penetrated by that boyish, 
<ju«hl. c^Trihd bine gaze which iLiuminated the modest, at¬ 
tractive face at Archie Mount. 

He at thar momeit was cogitating: "^WelL, now what? 
What im I recuired to say to this internal girlr* 

The zirds meughns came higgledy-piggledy ; from, a 
swarm K mesnens the most important is not always the 
UV-1 .n ~ < itirii. or • 











THE CLOUDED PEARL 


144 

“What is this country called? Who put these ex¬ 
traordinary clothes on me? This old tweed skirt, whose 
on earth is this? And how did I get into Violet’s stack¬ 
ings? Are we in the tropics? What happened to your 
beastly yacht? Did she go down to the bottom of the 
sea? How about everybody on board? Where’s my 
uncle? Surely he was in that boat? Surely he wasn’t 
drowned? He spoke to me, didn’t he, when we landed? 
Then where did he go ? How long were we at sea anyhow, 
before the wreck? Is this a South Sea Island, like in ‘The 
Blue Lagoon’ and ‘All Awry’ and ‘The Unofficial Honey¬ 
moon’ and poems by Rupert Brook? It looks just like 
it, but how long did we take to get here? What happened 
to Wallace? What’s the time, what’s the day of the 
week, are we still in December, and who carried me up 
to the cave last night—” While her mind buzzed with 
this, the first thing she said was: 

“Oh, that man’s coat that they put over me—I left it 
in the cave—” 

“That will be all right,” said Mr. Mount, exactly as if 
she had spoken of some wrap left behind in the Rolls. 

Extraordinary— 

So extraordinary that Margaret, opening her lips, 
scarcely knew which comment first to choose. And until 
any questions are asked, how can the questioned one tell 
which answers to supply? Tense silence fell for some 
seconds between man and girl on that solitary beach. 


ISLE OF BEAUTY 


145 


9 

Mount found himself completely at a loss. His face 
betrayed by no flicker the truth. But his thoughts, could 
they have been printed on the unruffled brow under the 
far from unruffled hair, would have read: “What has hap¬ 
pened to that old scoundrel? Why is he letting me 
down?” 

Also the young man’s whole being yearned for a pipe 
after his meal—and he hadn’t got a pipe. Pipeless, ex¬ 
pressionless, there he sat, inwardly seething with annoy¬ 
ance . . . but outwardly politely attentive to what Mar¬ 
garet was going to say next. 

Absurdly young she looked, he thought. “Is that be¬ 
cause I’ve never seen her before with a clean face?” 

Unpowdered, unrouged, uncarmined, unshadowed by 
blue on the eyelids and with lashes from which the mastic 
had been well washed away by storm, with hair, a wild 
tangle of brown, her face must have looked more like 
that of the little girl who had cheered poor Charles 
Mount’s last journey, than Charles Mount’s brother had 
ever beheld it. The rest of her was a caricature at which 
the sunshine, agleam upon her pearl string, laughed as 
it flung her shadow upon the sands at her oddly shaped 
feet. Sharp as cut metal upon those glittering sands 
his shadow confronted hers. There they sat, he and she l 
composing an illustration to one of the three oldest 
stories in the world: girl and man alone on a desert 
island. Between the castaways their primitive wood fire 
flickered and glowed. Facing them, the blue sea mur¬ 
mured and moved. Behind them rose cliff a^>d unexplored 


146 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


hinterland. The breeze tossed down a waft of scent. 
Gulls called in the silence. For another second the 
silence held. Then the girl, pushing back her hair, fas¬ 
tened big eyes upon the man and asked him, with agita¬ 
tion : 

“Mr. Mount, are we the only two people on this 
island?” 


CHAPTER III 


SALT OP LIFE 

1 


V ARIETY is the salt of life; variety and contrast 
were to remake existence for Margaret, thus 
whisked from Casino to cave! 

There leave her, for the moment. Go back to the 
luxurious bedroom which was the last in which the ailing 
sybarite had slept—the largest room on the first floor 
of that Nice hotel. 

The air of it was stuffy, steam-heated, and biteless. 
And how deadly impersonal is the “feel” of any hotel 
bedroom! Completely, its dazzling white ripolin and 
puffy jam-pink upholstery neutralized the atmosphere 
of any visitors whose hats may have been reflected in its 
tilted mirrors, whose toilet bottles have glittered on its 
glass shelves, whose wraps have dangled on its wardrobe 
hangers. 

Here, on the morning that first saw Margaret on her 
island cleaning out fish—oh, contrast—here Margaret’s 
mother and I were putting away Margaret’s “things.” 

What a chaos littered, strewed and piled bed, chairs, 
carpet of the bedroom—shelves, chairs, white tiled floor 
of the adjoining bathroom. A dust of face powder lay 
thick over all. There was also an odd flotsam of cos¬ 
metics mingled with drugs. Boxes of iron tablets—of 

147 


148 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


indigestion preparations in bismuth and other nostrums 
that had been and would for ever remain unknown to 
Margaret’s mother, rolled here and there out of garments 
I took up. The body is more than raiment; what wonder¬ 
ful frocks the child had left! Innovation trunks dis¬ 
gorged pretties, frillies and boudoir fripperies. Hap¬ 
hazard her possessions were swept together. Without 
guidance of taste (for the heiress evidently bought things 
as they were offered to her), a tidal wave of spending had 
swamped her room with exhibits from vitrines of dress 
artistes, hat designers, perfumers, creators of lingerie dt 
luxe bearing the maker’s signature upon the hem. The 
name “Margaret” was scrawled in violet enamel across 
ivory-backed brushes, hand mirrors, powder boxes, mani¬ 
cure tools by the bazaarful. Yet nothing spoke of an in¬ 
dividual Margaret—except the silver framed portrait of 
Jack Verity in uniform, his last gift to his little girl. 

This was half hidden by a much larger photograph 
signed “Yevonde,” showing two attenuated youths in eve¬ 
ning dress, arm in arm, attitudinizing with opera hats, 
monocles and canes. 

“Claude and Cynthia,” sighed Margaret’s mother, as I 
glanced at this. 

“Cynthia?” 

“She went to a dance dressed as Claude to see how 
many of their friends would take her for her brother,” 
explained Violet Verity, sorting into pairs the frail, leg- 
coloured cobwebs, her child’s stockings. “They will be 
here directly.” 

“I thought they would be here days ago.” 


SALT OF LIFE 


149 


“Something occurred to put that off, and I was so 
glad; but now, here they are! . . . They rang up this 
morning from their hotel the moment they arrived. Said 
they would come immediately they had had a bath and 
got dressed!” 

“Did you tell them that she was—” 

“No. Over the telephone? How could I? But now I 
shall have to explain to them—or rather not explain to 
them. Oh, dear, how complicated life is. . . . Why did 
I let dear Uncle Tom persuade me to agree to it?” 

2 

The fact was her Uncle Tom had practically hypno¬ 
tized her into agreeing to it—at least into as much of it 
as he chose to divulge. 

Gradually, deliberately, systematically, thoroughly the 
old sailor had set about frightening Margaret’s gentle 
mother on the subject of her only child. 

There had been many other discussions both in Hill 
Street and at Nice about the way Margaret was heading, 
about how her life in France was only London over again, 
only farther down the map of Europe. 

Quite pitilessly he had harped upon the string of 
Jack’s fineness compared with that of possible Oddley 
grandchildren. 

Not such a gigantic task wearing Violet down. 

Finally his ultimatum had gone forth. And he had 
said: “If you agree, I’ll bring back to you instead of this 
neurotic human debris a wholesome, jolly girl. May take 


150 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


weeks; may take months. Can’t say which yet. Only I 
promise you one thing, Violet, you’ll never regret handing 
her over to me. Will you do this?” 

Greatly daring (but tremulous) Violet Verity had 
promised: “Very well, Uncle, I will.” 

Poor, put-upon Violet Verity. She was told nothing 
of the storms at sea or of the desert island plot. 

Only she knew that there was to be an enforced setting 
of sails. She helped me at the last moment to put together 
the parcel of rough-and-ready necessaries for the sea trip. 

She hardly enquired why the outfit suited so little a 
voyage on a 200-ton yacht, fitted up as the “Sweetheart 
II” was with every modern convenience. She had seen me 
go off to that yacht party with Margaret. She had con¬ 
sented to take no farewell of her own child that might 
wake the girl’s suspicions. 

Yes, she had swallowed that seven-camel-power ar¬ 
rangement. 

Now—days afterwards!—came these gnats of Oddleys. 

Their names were sent up. 

“The first time since we have known them that they 
have asked for Madame Verity. Now you must come with 
me—please, please—and stand by me while I cope with 
these two. . . 


3 

In Mrs. Verity’s private sitting room we found a third 
young visitor. 

Besides Cynthia Oddley (turned out chic as a magpie 
in black-and-white stripes, and making a sinister one-eyed 


SALT OF LIFE 


151 


effect because of her black monocle attached to a broad 
black-and-white ribbon!), besides her brother Claude 
(Empire-waisted suit fitting him like a grey suede glove), 
there appeared the robuster, the red-haired Eric (I never 
caught his surname) wearing golf kit from Loud and 
Giddy’s, with plus fours bulging down to his ankle bones. 

All three of them turned upon Mrs. Verity, after the 
briefest greeting, with the demand: “But what is all this 
about Peggy ? . . . These priceless idiots downstairs tele¬ 
phoned that she had gone away!” 

“She has gone away,” admitted Margaret’s mother. 

People say nothing surprises the modern young. 

Three of them, however, were for several seconds 
smitten speechless with amazement. 

“Away? Without us?” From Cynthia: “Where to? 
Who’s she gone with?” 

“Her uncle,” said Violet Verity (head well up, biting 
a lip that would quiver!), “insisted upon it. He—he—• 
he—carried her off from all of us. . . . Doctor’s orders. 
. . . So, of course, he took her—” 

“Took her?” Cynthia was still incredulous. “How 
could anybody?” 

“Took her where? And how long for?” came from the 
gaping Claude. 

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t quite know how long 
they—the—the party will take,” returned Violet Verity, 
flurried but dignified. My old schoolfellow was standing 
her ground; a wrench it must have been to her to do 
anything so uncharacteristic. Slender and silvery. Epit¬ 
ome of all that was sweetest and soundest of a bygone 
day, she faced this Cynthia. “I can only tell you that 


152 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


he has taken Margaret off, as he so much wished to do, 
for a long sea voyage.” 

A long silence of consternation. 

The first sound to be made by anybody in that room 
came from Eric, of the bodyguard. 

“Well! that’s one on us, isn’t it?” And he laughed. 

I liked the red-haired boy for that. The Oddleys—I 
couldn’t help thinking so!—do rather “let down” their 
generation. The Erics of it keep the average well up. 

Picking at her dropped monocle, Cynthia broke into 
further exclamations: “Peggy? Peggy, who vowed she’d 
die before she set foot on a ship? Peggy never let herself 
be packed off like that! She’d absolutely refuse! You 
mean to say—you mean to say Peggy went?” 

(Went, indeed. Remembering Margaret, as I had last 
seen her crumpled, helplessly unconscious, against deck¬ 
house cushions, I had to turn to the window. . . . Its 
balcony overlooked the Promenade, gay with December 
sunlight, with December visitors passing and repassing. I 
stared at cars that streaked by, long and shining as fish 
—at motor-bicycles, hurtling along under riders attired 
like deep-sea divers—English, Americans, Continentals, 
could be picked out one from another, even while their 
moving figures were no bigger than bees in the setting of 
orange-tree avenues, palms, cupolas, and toyish piers of 
Europe’s most artificialized coast. I stared out, to hide 
my laughter.) 

“Anyhow, she has gone,” Margaret’s mother was mur¬ 
muring. 

“Has she left a note? ... No? NO? She didn’t leave 
a line for me? . . . Or for Claude? . . . How was that?” 


SALT OF LIFE 


153 


“I don’t think she had time, Cynthia, before she went—” 

“Well! ... So she really has gone, then? With that 
old . . . with Mr. Lloyd?” 

I looked round. Cynthia’s sharp, boy-featured, calcu¬ 
lating face showed a host of speculations through that 
wave of surprise that had first washed it blank of any ex¬ 
pression. “Why,” she exclaimed, “should Peggy do what 
he wanted? Peggy has her own money.” 

Completely I realized how much Miss Oddley had been 
building on that. 

Genuine misery was assailing the brother, for less un¬ 
worthy reasons. Blankly he faltered: “I have been count¬ 
ing the days. Counting the days, I’ve been, to see Peggy 
again. It seemed such ages. I’ve been feeling—” He 
blinked bright drops off his light lashes. They fell onto 
his peaked young chin, over the exquisite pearl-grey silk 
V of waistcoat between the lapels of his high-waisted coat. 
He quavered: “Feeling like death!” 

His sister snapped: “Oh, for God’s sake, Odds ! Don’t 
make such a blasted fool of yourself! You idiot, it’s 
not as if Peggy had gone away to get married, or as if 
she had gone away from us for ever—” 

“When will she be back?” appealed Lord Oddley, clear¬ 
ing his throat and blowing his nose on a morsel of mauve 
batik that spread a hit of Le Jade scent. 

“When are you expecting her back, Mrs. Verity?” 

Soft-hearted Mrs. Verity opened her lips—shut them. 
(Mr. Lloyd had stipulated that the merest incomplete 
outline of Margaret’s doings should be given to the family 
Oddley.) “Her plans are so ... so unsettled.” 

“Everything’s settled now as far as I’m concerned 


154 * 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


, . . that is, about going on to Cairo,” mourned Claude, 
wretched. “I don’t care to go on to Egypt without 
Peggy; do you, Cyn?” 

“I don’t,” said Miss Oddley curtly (and I thought I 
jmew why). “I’d fixed up all kinds of things . . . various 
mousing people that we were making a party of at the 
Semiramis Hotel, I’d told Margaret it would be that 
instead of Shepherds.” (I thought I knew who would 
have settled bills at the Semiramis.) “Now we shall just 
have to muck about this mouldy coast, I suppose, until 
we hear what she wants us to do—” 

“Yep,” said Eric; “rather mouldy of Peggy leaving 
her bereaved pals without any faintest idea! Well, I think 
I shall raise a car and dash over to Sardinia or Corsica 
nr somewhere. How would that be, Claude?” 

“I don’t want to go anywhere.” 

“Claude—mayn’t I order you something to drink?” 

“Oh, thanks so very much, Mrs. Verity, I don’t think 

50 -” 

“I do,” put in Eric with his smile. “Much sounder 
idea to drink a pleasant voyage to the girl and all that. 
X think we could all do with a side-car cocktail, if you 
don’t mind. 4 Seed-ay-karr / they’d call it.” 

“Ring the bell, Eric,” commanded Miss Oddley crossly. 
Her unblacked-out eye still fixed Margaret’s mother. 
Anon she demanded: “How soon do we hear from Peggy?” 

“That I can’t tell you, either. I really don’t know!” 

“But, Mrs. Verity—well, where does one write to her, 
ihen?” 

Here Violet Verity began to look lost. Before this, I 


SALT OF LIFE 155 

had had to be spokeswoman in a dormitory row. I an- 
swered for her now. 

<ff Why not write to Thomas Cook? I should put ‘Care 
of Thomas Cook, 5 if I were you. 55 

Eric, not unnaturally, asked: “Thomas Cook where ?” 

“Rio, 55 said I, mentioning the first foreign port that 
happened to come into my head. 

“Rio? 55 wailed Claude, dropping his jaw over that tray 
of cocktails which had just been brought. “But I thought 
Mrs. Verity said that Mr. Lloyd had swept off Peggy for 
a cruise in the South Seas. 55 

“Yawp, 55 agreed Eric (the Yale-Oxford mode had now 
obliterated the word “Yes” from his conversation), “Mrs. 
Verity did say the South Sea Islands. What’s the good of 
writing to Margaret at Rio?” 

"What indeed, thought L However. 

“I should write to Rio, if I were you,” I stodgily main¬ 
tained. “If I write to Margaret at all, that’s where X 
shall write.” 

And I looked matronly — which is always a reliable 
mask. 

Seldom, however, have I had turned upon me a more 
suspicious glance than that with which Miss Oddley pre¬ 
sently took leave of us and went out to the lift, accom¬ 
panied by those other two mystified friends of Margaret. 

If any of them had even for a moment guessed at the 
truth of what had happened, and of what was going to 
happen! 


156 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


4 

Scarcely had the three left us than a tap at the sitting- 
room door heralded the small liveried chasseur who 
brought up a cable for me. 

“May I?” (I had not yet had time to exchange a word 
with Violet about the interlude just over.) 

“Oh, please do. ... It is all right? You won’t have 
to leave me for a little, will you?” 

“Oh, no. It’s all perfectly all right.” 

I folded up the cable; put it very carefully away. 

This was what it had said: 

“All well trip panned out according to plan Margaret now 
sleeping like child please dispatch mail as arranged and await 
further communications cordial greetings Lloyd.” 


CHAPTER IV 


QUERIES 


TOW leave again the Riviera coast, the cosmopolitan 
crowds—seeking cocktail bars, halts of aperitif. 
Leave the Oddleys at a window table in the 
sunniest corner of the Ruhl, to watch the passing show of 
Argentine adventuresses, gesticulating Jew millionaires, 
lounge lizards wearing boy mannequin suits on their wispy 
forms and sepia half-moons beneath their sombre, rolling 
eyes—leave them to watch these and to discuss again 
and again the mystery (“for there is something infernally 
mysterious”) of Peggy’s sudden flight. 

Return to that girl about whom all this coil was made. 
Return to that far beach of the bonfire, that untrodden, 
sunny solitude, where she sat, saying to her fellow cast¬ 
away: 

“Mr. Mount. Tell me. Are we the only two people 
on this island?” 

“I haven’t been all over the island yet,” said young 
Mount. 

What else could he say? For a dozen reasons he felt 
more and more uncomfortable. With his brogued heel 
he smoothed the kicked-up sand about his boulder. To 
play for time, that was what he had got to do, he sup^ 
posed. He said: “I don’t know who or what might be 
here. You see—I’ve only had time to go up stream a bit. 

157 


158 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


And to explore this creek—and that one you came out of. 
An d that other one.” Jerking his dark head backwards, 
he put up his hand with a gesture of irritation towards 
the hair usually admirably brushed, seal finished—now 
taking every direction on his head. “Regular chain of 
these little bays, there seems to be along this bit of 
coast—” 

“It is an island, isn’t it?” 

“Yes.” (He was thankful that this at least was the 
truth.) “It’s an island all right, Miss Verity.” 

“And my uncle?” 

Mr. Mount was silent—as well he might be. 

“Is he on the island?” 

“Miss Verity, I don’t know—on my solemn word of 
honour, I do not know. I wish to God I did. He may be 
on the island.” And behind these jerked out sentences 
fury seethed in Mount’s heart. 

2 

For this was what the young man thought: 

“The old scoundrel. The old ruffian. Takes my word 
of honour and leaves me in this predicament. Serve him 
right if I blew the whole gaff. Serve him right if I said 
to the girl: ‘Now look here, I’ll tell you the whole story. 
You’ve been spirited away here under false pretences. 
That was no more of a storm last night than it’s been 
for a week of nights. You wouldn’t have thought so, you 
poor kid, if you hadn’t been so ill for days. The ‘Sweet¬ 
heart II’ no more sprang a leak and went to the 
bottom of the sea than you are at the bottom of the sea 


QUERIES 159 

yourself. You aren’t on any desert island either. It’» 
where your uncle thought you ought to be. This was his 
nearest attempt at it. He means to keep you here for 
how long I don’t know. But, anyhow, that was his 
funeral. At least I thought it was. I was given to un- 
derstand that he wouldn’t leave you once he landed you. 
I took it that he’d be here the whole time to see that you 
kept to this bit of beach and didn’t get wandering about 
and finding out that you weren’t twenty-four hours’ sail 
from the French coast. He landed you here last night, 
and this morning when I went to call the old rascal he’d 
disappeared, leaving a note that says nothing, dropped 
down by a stone close to my head— 

“ ‘He’s gone off, he’s broken his share of the bargain 
and so I break mine—’ 

“I can’t do that,” young Mount decided inwardly. 
“It’s a lesson to me. Never put yourself under an obliga¬ 
tion to any man again so that he has any claim on you. 
That old scoundrel, Lloyd, has more than paid himself 
back by this for anything he did for me— 

“Leaving me here stranded, perhaps for the entire 
morning, with this infernal girl— 

“Where’s he got to? Gone off with the boat too— 
“Well, I suppose he’ll be turning up in an hour’s time 
or so? Meantime— 

“What am I to say to her? Query.” 

3 

He stared away from the girl’s bewildered, freshened 
face when he spoke next: 


160 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“Miss Verity, I—I wouldn’t be too much distressed if 
I were you. Oh, I know that that’s an odd thing to say, 
seems odd considering what’s happened—I mean consid¬ 
ering the circumstances. But I have an idea—I wouldn’t 
mind betting that Mr. Lloyd will turn up presently—to 
find we’ve eaten all the breakfast.” 

“But the others? The sailors? Wallace?” 

“I haven’t seen a trace of one of those fellows either. 
Not a trace. But don’t worry too much about them, 
Miss Verity—” 

“I am not worrying, but I must ask you what you 
know. It’s less worrying than having you treat me as 
if I were a baby,” said Margaret, not unreasonably—in 
fact, more reasonably than Mount had yet heard the 
“infernal girl” speak. “Did the sailors get off in the other 
boats? Then there is hope for them?” 

“Yes, oh, yes. Plenty. Jolly good boats the ‘Sweet¬ 
heart II’ had—has.” 5 

“You mean they’ve a good chance of getting somewhere 
—or of being picked up—” 

“Ah, they’ve every chance,” replied Mount. “A pity 
we got separated from them at all.” And she did not 
know that he was getting his teeth into that reply. 

“And how long do you suppose we shall have to 
stay?” 

“To stay? Here?” 

“Yes”—Margaret’s dazed little voice sounded an ir¬ 
rational, illogical, unexpected note of positive exhilaration 
(could it be?) as she uttered the words—“here on this 
desert island.” 

Secretly young Mount fumed. “She’s swallowed it. 


QUERIES 161 

She’s asked for it. She’s got to have it then. Ten thou¬ 
sand curses on my having been dragged into standing the 
first of the racket alone!” 

He answered her: “I wish to God I had any idea of how 
long we shall—we shall stay. How can I tell you, 
though?” 

“No, I suppose you can’t. Of course you don’t know 
where we are. Was there no sign of the yacht either?” 

“Not a sign, Miss Verity” (dismally). 

“Well. These things do happen,” said, quite unex¬ 
pectedly, the sailor’s daughter. 

“I suppose,” she added presently, staring out to sea, 
“I suppose what we have to hope for now is the chance 
of our being sighted and taken off by some ship? People 
nearly always are, aren’t they? Comparatively soon. 
Ships do pass this island, I suppose, if it’s near enough 
to the course of ships to have been wrecked. Other ships 
will pass?” 

“Good Lord, yes! and—” Only just in time Mount 
checked himself from mentioning a well-known aeroplane 
service. “There’s sure to be a boat along presently or— 
or something,” he tried to comfort her. She was taking 
it less impossibly than he would have credited her for, 
say on that evening at the Berkeley. 

“In the meantime,” she said, “in the meantime, here we 
are.” 

“Apparently,” agreed Mount tersely. 

“And what do you think we had better do, Mr. Mount?” 

“Do?” 

Stooping, Mr. Mount picked up a bit of heavier wood 
which had fallen from the top of the bundle on his bon- 


162 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


fire. He made the movement to gain time and hide his 
face, but it brought an idea. 

“I might start hacking out a couple of forks for us 
to eat our fish with next time,” he suggested; thankful, 
too, to have hit upon something to do with his hands. One 
of them went to his trousers pocket, then to the divisions 
in his belt. 

“My knife—” 

“Oh! I left that,” explained Margaret the leaver, “by 
the waterfall—” 

Mr. Mount sprang up and strode to the rock, moving 
as usual with that gentle daintiness of a very large dog. 

Margaret, annoyed, thought he might have waited until 
she had finished talking to him before he retrieved the 
precious knife. But she wished she had not at that mo¬ 
ment forgotten it. 

He brought it back, got his piece of wood, sat down 
on his boulder again to whittle. His eyes were fixed on 
his work as he said to Margaret in a voice that somehow 
struck her as not quite natural: “A piece of luck that I 
did not leave my knife in the yacht. And that I remem¬ 
bered matches and a few things. There was a parcel or 
something in your cabin that they shoved into your boat. 
I shoved it into that little cave place of yours. Were 
you fairly comfortable last night?” 

“Comfortable? I suppose so. I mean, I was too fast 
asleep to know. I must have been comfortable, mustn’t 
I? May I stay there?” 

“Stay there, Miss Verity?” 

“I mean may I keep that cave for my own, for my 
sleeping room?” 


QUERIES 163 

She had swallowed it. The whole farce she’d swallowed 
just as that old ruffian of a Lloyd had meant her to. And 
he, Mount, who had told the old man he didn’t believe 
he could get away with it, here he found himself involved 
and helping its further progress. 

“Of course. Stay in the most sheltered spot, Miss 
Verity—until something happens.” 

“Yes.” 

A pang took the shipwrecked girl. “Shelter” meant 
now just an arch of rock over her head. Sand under her! 
All around the unexplored. 


4 

She thought of Hill Street. 

Her own establishment—its resilient beds! Its soft, 
ribbon-bound blankets! Its thickly puffed satin eider¬ 
down quilts! Its double windows, heavily curtained 
against any breath of London’s winter! 

Far away in London, the moist and foggy cold invaded 
the streets and turned people into shivering bundles of 
damp clothing. Even now the black-bonneted flower- 
seller at the corner proffered holly and mistletoe with 
those exiled blossoms from the South of France—carna¬ 
tions, the first of the mimosa. Lumbering motor-buses 
were postered with advertisements for Grand Christmas 
Bazaars. 

All utterly remote! Like thinking of another planet 
. . . here in this warm sunshine, in these breezes in¬ 
vigorating, yet temperate. 


1 64 } 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


5 

But the thought of London brought back to her again 
who she was. 

She gave her little arrogant, discontented frown. She 
threw a languid glance at her fellow castaway. Reluc¬ 
tantly she admitted: 44 Well, if that is the best place I 
suppose I had better have it—” 

“Good,” said Mr. Mount, suppressing a smile. For 
through his furious annoyance with Mr. Lloyd, there 
struggled through his sense of the grim humour of the 
situation. Since he was to be left in charge of it evi¬ 
dently for an hour or so, he may as well play up. 

“Very well, Miss Verity, that cove will have to be your 
room, so to speak. This one, here, with the bonfire and 
the water must be our general sitting-room. I suppose 
I shall have to doss by the fire so as to keep it going 
at night. That’s the most important thing at the mo¬ 
ment; to keep the fire alight.” 

“Of course. Even I knew that. And presently, of 
course, you will build up the great stack to make the 
blazing beacon—” 

“The—?” 

“The blazing beacon, of course. To attract the atten¬ 
tion of any passing vessel.” 

“Oh—quite,” answered Mount, after a second’s indus¬ 
trious whittling at the thick end of his driftwood. Any¬ 
thing not to have to discuss—until the old man came along 
and made it clear what they were going to discuss. 

“As a matter of fact we might start getting more 
fuel together now.” 


QUERIES 165 

Margaret, getting to her feet, glanced about her and 
actually seemed ready to begin collecting twigs. 

He commented: “There’s only very small stuff about 
on this beach. Can’t keep much of a fire going with 
snippets and scraps. The only two big bits got burnt 
up at breakfast-time. Now what I think had better be 
done is for me to leave you.” 

“Leave me?” 

“Not for long and I shan’t be far off, I promise you. 
I—I can’t be,” the young man said, again privately grit¬ 
ting his teeth. “What I had better do is get up that 
cliff there—er—find out what timber there is about, and 
have a look-see generally.” 

Secretly he promised himself that he would intercept 
that old ruffian Mr. Lloyd’s entrance and give him a 
thorough telling off before he went down to his “in¬ 
fernal,” but misled, niece. 

“Oh, I’ll come with you, Mr. Mount.” 

“You can’t. We can’t possibly both go—” 

“Why not?” 

“Because”—bright thought—“some one has got to stop 
by this bonfire. If you don’t mind, Miss Verity, you 
must stay where you are. 

“And please,” he added very anxiously, “don’t go out 
of this creek and the one to the right.” 

For these were the bounds that the old ruffian had set 
some time ago. 

“Promise you won’t leave this bit of beach in between 
until I come down again. You will promise me that, 
won’t you?” 

“I promise,” she said—and it was in that voice of a 


166 THE CLOUDED PEARL 

child put on its honour not to go beyond the garden 
gate. 

“She is just a kid,’* the young man told himself exas- 
peratedly, as he turned to the easiest upward slant among 
the rocks at the foot of the cliff. “Dashed if I’m cut out 
for a kid’s nurse, though . . 

She, watching, saw the big figure in shirt and trousers 
swing itself lightly up between boulders and low-growing 
bushes. Saw it cut out dark against blue, where sky 
met cliff-line. 

It disappeared. 

“Not even waving his hand,” thought Margaret. 
“Never mind, quite a comfort to be alone again. . . . 
|What do I do now?” 


CHAPTER V 


OTHEB SIDE OF EDEN 

1 


M EMORIES of everything she had heard and read 
about “people on desert islands” went through 
Margaret’s head. 

Uninterruptedly busy these people seemed. Building. 
Planting. Manufacturing bows and arrows. Fishing. 
Collecting bread-fruit. Bringing down birds or small 
deer. Curing skins in the sunlight. Instantly concocting 
their own civilization in their wilderness! 

The over civilized, the ultra-modern Margaret only 
now began to realize how wonderful, how efficient, how 
resourceful, how superior had been these other castaways. 
“J ought to do some work—” 

As a child she had been left alone often enough on 
the seashore. Here, presently, she reverted to childish 
activities of those days. 

First it was the flat stone to find—then it was digging 
a hole in the sand to bury that little heaj? of fish spines, 
which was all that there remained of their breakfast. 
That, too, was a memory of far-off days when her mother 
had taught her the enormity of throwing sandwich papers 
about to spoil the lovely out-of-doors. 

Now she buried debris as carefully as if she were twelve 
years old; she patted sand down above it ... a detail of 

167 


168 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


the smallest kind, jet it seemed to stand between Mar¬ 
garet and the utter seriousness of the situation in which 
(as she believed) she now found herself. Shanghaied! 
Shipwrecked! Marooned! Without any clothes but these 
odd garments over the flimsy frock in which she stood 
up! Alone, with one other person! Without a notion 
what had happened to the others! Without knowing 
where her next meal would come from! Practically with¬ 
out shelter for her head! But what struck her as most 
extraordinary was that, though she should have been 
dazed with misery, anxiety, suspense—though she ought 
to have felt like death— 

Miraculously, she didn’t. 

The island sunshine was ever warmer upon her. The 
breeze tossing her hair had actually begun to fill her with 
fresh life. 

Incredibly, but urgently, the presentiment filled her: 
“I shall never be unhappy on this island!” 

2 

If she was destined to be not unhappy, she was pres¬ 
ently going to be fairly uncomfortable! 

But for the first part of the morning the sense of 
novelty inspired her as she sped up and down the lonely 
beach, busy as a bee on the first sunshiny day. To and 
fro she moved; stooping, gathering twigs, washed-off 
branches, any odd bits of wood. Stacking it up beside the 
red boulder upon which young Mount had laid his 
roughed-out wooden fork, she collected quite a pile. 


OTHER SIDE OF EDEN 


169 


With pride, the girl who had not for nine years done 
a hand’s-turn, regarded this work of her own hands! 
Presently she would make another heap, of seaweed for 
damping down the fire. Now and again she fed the fire 
between those flat, smoke-blackened hearthstones; she 
crouched, holding her hands to the heartening glow. She 
was optimistic, amused at the thought of that young 
man’s surprise when he came! 

His return was shown at last by this: down the cliff- 
side there was siding, in jerky spasms, two tree branches 
which seemed to be moving “on their own.” Mr. Mount, 
dragging them, was nearly hidden by foliage. Under 
the rustling, sweeping, Birnamwood-like load, he struggled 
down between those boulders in full sunshine. Staggering 
down to the level, he dragged the branches along the sand. 

Half a dozen paces away from the bonfire he let the 
burden go, straightened himself, and with a grunt drew 
his forearm across his glistening wet forehead. 

Margaret, so new to the idea of manual labour, could 
only think of her own achievement. Proudly she called 
to him to look, pointing to her own small heaps of fuel. 
She was surprised that Mr. Mount, heated and breathing 
quickly, only glanced cursorily. True, he said, “Good; 
what a lot you’ve collected!” (That young man would 
retain his politeness in the front row at an earthquake.) 
“But I’m afraid, you know, that this won’t last very far 
through the night—” 

“Won't it?” (After she had been working for hours!) 

“Afraid not ... I shall have to get down some more 
of these boughs,” said he. “I wrenched off what I could.” 


170 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“Where from?” 

“A sort of grove place about a hundred yards up on 
the top of the cliff.” 

“Then of course I shall come and help you,” she sug¬ 
gested with the keenness of the novice, “to drag some of 
it down.” 

That, of course, might be a good thing, he thought; 
just to pass the time away, and it would prevent his hav¬ 
ing to chat to her. Wiping his forehead again, he 
looked doubtfully at the girl’s lean, overgrown figure. “I 
don’t know whether you’ll be able to manage, Miss 
Verity.” 

“Manage? Why on earth shouldn’t I?” 

Indeed, why should this man put her down as a fool 
—soft, slack, an encumbrance? Did he imagine that she 
was good for nothing on desert islands? At the bottom 
of Margaret’s heart, long-dormant instinct whispered: 
“Got to rise to the occasion . . . behave well in difficulty 
as well as in danger. You’re a sailor’s daughter.” 

She looked up into the young man’s face. It had red¬ 
dened slightly; freckles stood out on that light flush. 

She noticed now that he was more deeply concerned 
than before. 

Quickly she asked: “Has anything happened? Any¬ 
thing worse happened, I mean?” 

“Oh, nothing. . . . That’s just it—I mean nothing at 
all, Miss Verity.” 

“I feel you are so bothered.” 

“That,” said Mount, “is quite natural, isn’t it?” 

“Yes. Of course. But it isn’t only that. I believe—” 
“What?” 


OTHER SIDE OF EDEN 


171 


“I believe you are wishing to goodness that you had 
been wrecked here with my uncle, or Wallace, or one of 
the sailors, or anybody but me. Now, aren’t you?” 

“Well—” 

“Yes. You are. Just because I am a girl,” said she, 
facing him angrily, but not with the peevish anger she had 
previously shown. “You think I shall be no earthly good 
on this desert island. You think I shall be able to do 
nothing. Do you suppose I never helped my father to 
build bonfires? I know a great deal about all these 
things, really. We’ll have to make a great big woodpile. 
Come along!” 


3 

Eve, turned out of Eden, was probably the first woman 
to respond to the woman’s stimulus—change. Adam, the 
first conservative, must have glanced back, regretfully, at 
a lovely lazy garden where the work did itself—the place 
which he had always known. But one can imagine Eve’s 
eyes, gazing ahead with eager curiosity to Outer-Eden! 

So with Margaret on her first island afternoon. 

Quite good fun it would be, convincing this anxious, 
bothered man that she could help to do a man’s work, 
showing him that she, too, could “make good” in a crisis. 
She enjoyed that first clamber up the cliff, past red rocks, 
in and out of grey boulders and scrub. Higher, higher 
—until they sighted that grove and those other boulders 
beyond it, and those rising cliffs of grey, almost pearly 
white in the sunlight, which was as far as Margaret could 
see of her island. . • . Helping herself along by grab- 


172 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


bing at the scrub between the boulders, she smelt at the 
fragrance left on her palm by a grey-green plant (big as 
the bush of southernwood at the Cottage gate), which she 
had grasped. 

“What’s this plant? * . . Everything here smells so 
lovely when you crush it underfoot! Better—much better 
than apres la pluie. . . . This smells like something I 
know, though. Reminds me of something I’ve tasted . 
What’s it . . . what’s it called, Mr. Mount?” 

Young Mount apologized for being not much use at 
plant names. He had just been going to pronounce the 
word “vermouth,” but “vermouth” is not a tropical plant, 
and he mustn’t set the “infernal girl” asking him more 
awkward questions. So he quickened the pace—and she, 
panting, breathing from parts of her lungs that for long 
hadn’t been brought into play, drew in the scent of the 
basking aromatic tangle that caught at her knees as she 
climbed. 

“This must be what makes the breeze of the island smell 
so—so delicious.” 

“I suppose so,” agreed Mr. Mount. 

The distracted young man cared little enough what 
anything smelt like. He was in a fume of worry and im¬ 
patience and he had to conceal it. 

How long was that old rascal going to leave him here 
with this “infernal girl” who believed that he and she 
were the newest thing in Robinson Crusoe couples—and 
who would have to be kept in that belief? 

He had given his word. . . . Unhesitatingly he had 
given his word to old Lloyd. . . . And in that note of 
this morning old Lloyd had scribbled: 


OTHER SIDE OF EDEN 173 

“Am trusting M. to you until I return. Uncertain when 
this will be. Keep all dark, as arranged.” 

“As arranged ” . . . one of the old ruffian’s favourite 
phrases! 

Mount would have to fall in with it—letting this help¬ 
less flapper who climbed the hill beside him imagine— 
well, everything that she was imagining. He wouldn’t 
be able to leave her even for an hour—even though two 
hours would have brought them well within reach of every 
human amenity. 

Here they were, abandoned, quite as thoroughly as if 
they were at the other side of the world, to a naked strug¬ 
gle for food and warmth. 

“Very well,” thought Mount, damping down his fury 
for the present. “Keep it up . . .!” And when he and 
the girl arrived at the rough, natural terrace on the cliff 
and the grove of eucalyptus, of ilex, of olive, he did fling 
himself into the part and exclaim convincingly that it was 
a pity his knife wasn’t a bit stouter, and that if he snapped 
the blade it would be fatal. 

“Of course,” mused Margaret earnestly. “The only 
thing we have to cut our fish up with or anything!” 

“I’m going to swarm up there,” Mount told her, 
measuring with his gaze the height of the next bough 
which he meant to bring down. “I shall hack halfway 
through that fellow; then hang on to it and bring it down 
by my own weight. If you wouldn’t mind just standing 
out of the way, Miss Verity—” 

Miss Verity, hastily stepping aside in the scrub, stood 
and watched him at work. 


174 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


4 

Yes; fascinated, she watched the young man swarm 
up the nearest eucalyptus, attain his bough, fling a long 
leg across. She watched him shift himself into position 
to shift and hack. She watched him swinging, tugging. 
A crack! . . . Further rustling and cracking, and the 
leafy bough dangled. Dragging the long strip of bark 
away from the bright scar on the trunk, it fell. It bore 
him down into the scrub, on his back. He picked himself 
up with a shake, a little nod. Grunting involuntarily, he 
twisted the bough finally from the trunk, pulled it free, 
flung it aside. 

“Very strong, isn’t he?” thought Margaret, watching. 

As it was probably the first time for years that she 
had given to any man more than a casual, languid, un¬ 
seeing glance, it is perhaps worth while to record the 
impression made upon her, by this being who (lately so 
elegant in drawing-rooms!) now moved so determinedly, 
perspiring, breathing deeply, wrestling with his tree, but 
mastering it as completely as she, after effort, could 
master a deeply rooted dandelion. . . . 

Eve, beholding Adam for the first time in the sweat of 
his brow wrestling with forces of nature, possibly found 
him better worth watching than when he lolled, in that 
orchard at her side? 

Now the sight of presentable young men was no novelty 
to Margaret. Had she not lived surrounded by the crea¬ 
tures? But what attention had she paid to the actual 
looks of that bodyguard who started cars, carried wraps, 
held open doors, picked up programs for her? Never had 


OTHER SIDE OF EDEN 


175 


it struck her to observe height, build, movements, gestures 
of these comely attendant youths. “I never notice men’s 
looks she had admitted—when Cynthia Oddley had ex¬ 
claimed : “Men are so hideous 1” 

Is that point of view spreading ? Girls say: “It doesn’t 
matter what the bridegroom is like to look at, does it” 
(this ominous remark I have myself heard girls make), 
“as long as the bride is pretty?” Very young girls gravi¬ 
tate towards the lovelier schoolfellow. During school 
days that is natural enough—but is it a good sign when, 
in their late teens and twenties, they fail (as Margaret 
had failed) to find the man better worth looking at? To 
have the ideal of all beauty fixed at feminine beauty only 
is but a one-sided vision. Some girls cherish it. To these, 
men become less and less. Already men have become to 
them infinitely less than the shop-window spread with 
smoothly alluring fabrics or deeply caressing furs. Soon, 
in some girlish eyes, men will be mere solid, oblong slabs 
of matter, taking up so much cubic space and obscuring 
so much sunlight. Men, who could not fathom the depths 
of stagnant indifference under the pretty, girlish, inces¬ 
sant ripples of seeming interest! It’s not a good sign! 
Whose fault is it? 

Partly, perhaps that of the everyday clothes of men 
which so obscure them: the levelling shapes, the earth 
colours, depressing drabs, thundercloud indigos that they 
will wear. ... A Nemesis, too, upon that changeless 
black-and-white which is the foil for women’s multicoloured 
evening bravery (who will weave their repoussoir into 
their romance?). . . . Partly it may be that the mascu¬ 
line form, at its best in strenuous movement, is not often 



176 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


enough seen by the gently bred feminine contemporary, 
except in games and sports. These remain the last strong¬ 
hold of male prestige. Hence flapper worship of “the 
crews.” Hence “the numbers of well-dressed women 
among the spectators” in accounts of prizefights. 

Always watching young Mount, Margaret was per¬ 
vaded by a brand-new respect for a man’s strength; but 
only subconsciously did she then take in his gracefulness 
under those rough garments, or notice how much younger- 
looking he now was because of the rumpled hair, the flush 
on his fair skin, the “come-alive look” of a man actively 
engaged in work that takes his mind as well as his body. 
Consciously she only thought that he was strong, swift, 
handy, good at these outdoor things. She only won¬ 
dered, while she waited for him, what she would have done 
if she had been left here all by herself without this man? 

Terrifying idea. . . . Instinctively it drove her a step 
nearer to where he worked. 


5 

Presently he turned, remarking to the sun-bathed, fra¬ 
grant landscape at large: “That’s enough. Better not 
leave that fire too long. We’ll cart this lot down now. 
Now, if you don’t mind hanging on to this, here—” 

Obediently Margaret hung on to that branch. Down 
the slope they made their way; hauling rustling branches, 
catching a bough now and then on a boulder-angle; now 
and then slipping a foot, bringing down a miniature land¬ 
slide. Down to the Bonfire Creek they made their arduous 
way—he and the “infernal girl.” 


OTHER SIDE OF EDEN 


177 


Reaching the beach they threw down the load, stoked 
up their fire, turned again to the cliff. Twice, three 
times, they made that journey, each time exchanging 
fewer words. Mount had plenty to think about. Mar¬ 
garet had enough to do to keep the young man from see¬ 
ing that, though she had begun stout-heartedly her after¬ 
noon of toil, her heart was now failing her. . . • 

6 

Before you are hard on the girl, think what her life 
of the last years had been; think how flaccid were the 
muscles of her overgrown, underexercised, unused body! 
The only physical activity she had known had been danc¬ 
ing, and these were not dancing muscles which were now 
brought into play. She became footsore, weary; her back 
seemed breaking. After the last of those climbs, those 
drags back, trailing boughs that grew ever more cumber¬ 
some, Margaret’s limbs also seemed too weighty for her 
to lift, too shaky for her to guide. 

Her heart pounded. Her face streamed. She set her 
teeth so as not to gasp. . . . 

Not so long before, the car had been ordered to take 
Miss Verity from hotel to milliner’s a stone’s throw away 
down the Boulevard; to wait for two hours, and then to 
take her back again. But the enervated Miss Verity who 
owned that Rolls and who chose those hats in fives—with 
no price mentioned!—was a later development than the 
sturdy little Margaret who had dug sweet-pea trenches 
in that Sussex garden. We grow from our roots. We 
return to our beginnings. With surprising quickness 


178 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Margaret Verity began going back to that basis of 
healthy, well-inherited pluck, of sticking things out. 

So she set her teeth as she tugged her branch down the 
cliff. She dragged it right up to the pile; and only then 
she dropped it. She dropped it so suddenly that young 
Mount, stacking up his own bough, looked sharply round. 

In consternation he ejaculated: “Good Lord! you’re 
all in. . . . Oh—” 


CHAPTER VI 


THE MOCK BROTHER 

1 

S HE held her tousled brown head well up as she re¬ 
plied that she was all right; that she could go on 
again in a moment if she took a little rest. 

But then her head dropped. The whole of her young 
length drooped, like one of those cut boughs, to the 
beach. Hardly knowing what was happening, she was 
just conscious of firm, warm, shirt-sleeved arms put about 
her. She sensed the comfort of human warmth, contact, 
of a low-pitched voice that quietly said: “All right. 
That’s all for you, Miss Verity; I’m going to take you 
to your cave now. Come along—” 

Through that rock passage he supported her into the 
creek on which she had opened her eyes an eternity of 
experiences ago. Again all sense of time had left Mar¬ 
garet. Then and there she could have fallen asleep as 
she walked those few steps. Her eyelids drooped over 
her eyes; she had to force them open again, to fix them 
on his face. . . . 

She was just sufficiently awake to see how (encourag¬ 
ingly, gently) he smiled at her as they reached the cave. 

“Sit down a minute.” He knelt. He scooped out in the 
sand a small hole that she did not realize yet was the cam¬ 
paigner’s groove for the hip-bone. Through closing eyes 

179 


180 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


she watched him. Sunset of peach-and-amber, making 
glorious the sand, turned to softest rose-colour the ordi¬ 
nary white shirt, which was clinging to the young man’s 
shoulders and back. 

“You ought to have a coat on,” Margaret murmured. 
“You ought to put on that motor-coat—” 

It sounds an ordinary remark? Possibly it sounded 
ordinary to him. But the reason it marked an epoch was 
because it was for the first time since she had left Sussex 
that the girl had considered the comfort of some one else. 

“I’m all right. I’ve got a sweater. Yes, honest Injun. 
I have. I’m going to sleep in that. Anyhow, it won’t be 
cold here, even at night. Providential, isn’t it, this 
weather? Now! I shall tuck you up like a baby—” 

His voice was the voice of some man talking to a sick 
puppy. Some men are as indulgent to babies, children, 
ailing women as others are with animals beloved. 

“—like a baby, in this. I say, Miss Verity! you didn’t 
happen to look in the pockets of that coat of mine last 
night ?” 

“It was your coat then?” 

“You didn’t look in the pockets? No? Well, look here 
now.” 

His hand (green with tree mould, black with smoke) 
held out a blue-wrapped packet. 

“Chocolate?” Naturally enough the wretched child 
(his thoughts dropped the “infernal girl” for the time 
being; she was now the “wretched child”) was once more 
starving. “Chocolate!” 

“And some water-biscuits.’’ 


THE MOCK BROTHER 


181 


“Good heavens, are there?” Margaret cried greedily* 
“I thought—I thought we should have to be rationed, like 
people are, to one meal a day.” 

“We’ll see about that, later. There will be a small 
sit-down supper to-night, though.” 

Sharing that supper of a quarter-of-a-pound, each, of 
nut chocolate, of water-biscuits and of spring-water, 
which he brought to her in an oyster shell, these toilers 
satisfied a part, at least, of their ravenous hunger. Then 
he disposed about her the heavy, fur-lined motor-coat, 
thicker than blankets. 

“Don’t stir to-morrow morning. Well, I’m afraid you 
won’t be able to. I’ll do the breakfast trout. [First catch 
your trout, of course.] You sleep. You stay lying 
there, until the stiffness goes off. I’m afraid you can 
expect to be stiff all right,” he warned her with that new 
gentleness of tone. 

Inwardly he fumed: “7/ this miserable kid were a boy 
now! I could fix her—give her a good rub-down, and a 
massage. . . . Devilish awkward! . . . Infernal shame. 
Probably all this is the best thing for her . . . but, 
Lord!” Outwardly he said: 

“I’m afraid that’s all I can do for you!” 

“Thank you most awfully, Mr. Mount.” 

“Good night!” 

“Good night!” 

Before the sound of footsteps crunching shells had died 
away, Margaret had again forgotten tiredness. 

No difference did it make that, after last night’s wreck, 
she had slept for so many hours the sleep of the dead. 


182 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Again she was thus asleep. She slept, while the last of 
the sunset faded, while the island dusk fell, while the 
island night, velvet and jewelled, cast further magic over 
that faerie land. Hour after hour Margaret slumbered 
under the stars, sunk in unconsciousness which, once, a 
vague dream invaded. Dimly out of depths there sim¬ 
mered up the peaky wistful face of young Oddley. She 
just noticed that he had dark hair instead of his albino 
plumage, and that he seemed to try to kiss her, and that 
she seemed to say: “No; don’t do that , Odds. Hold my 
hand instead. Like in the boat ... I don’t mind you 
holding my hand . . .” The black cloud of unconscious¬ 
ness fell again, wrapping her round. . . She slept. 

2 

Naturally she woke up unable to move; stiff, sore, ach¬ 
ing violently in every muscle that cried out against the 
sudden demand which yesterday had put upon it! 

The first day out across country after the beagles I 
The first hockey-match, after you have been laid up with 
influenza! Your first swim of the season, if you’ve not 
been in the water all winter! Your first morning of try¬ 
ing new and specially vigorous “jerks”— Think of the 
sequel to these. All those sensations, multiplied by ten, 
give but the merest inkling of how Margaret felt; the 
wretched child. 

Just as she realized her acute discomfort, she heard 
sounds from the “next-door” creek, the crunching of feet 
on shells, the low whistling, the voice of Mr. Mount hum¬ 
ming softly a snatch of the old song “Botany Bay”: 


THE MOCK BROTHER 


183 


“And the Captain and all of the crew. 

And the first and the second class passengers. 

Knows what us poor convicts goes through.” 

Crash—a bough went onto the pile. Then: 

“Awake, Miss Verity?” 

“Yes,” she called back. 

“May I bring you your breakfast?” 

“Please—” The word ended in a wince of pain. 

“Right! I’m coming in now.” 

He came; he seemed a heavenly visitant. 

Unutterably comforting and kind, he helped Margaret 
—that very sore, sick puppy!—to drag herself out of her 
rock shelter into full sunshine. 

For this was all the medicine available for the “wretched 
child” on this desert beach. Here were no creams, no 
embrocations, no lotion, no Pond’s Extract, no healing 
witch hazel. Only the doctoring of sleep that rebuilds, 
of quiet, of sun and air that remake, that restore and are 
food—better even than food. 

Food, however, he brought to her; carried, tray-like, 
on a flat stone with wooden implements that were still 
more like firewood than forks, he served her breakfast of 
fish a la Lake-Dweller; and, more! he held out two oranges. 

“Oranges!” Margaret exclaimed, overjoyed at sight of 
golden gifts which civilization has made of no value. 
“Are there oranges growing on this island?” 

“Er—a few, apparently. I got hold of this couple. 
Now don’t move about! Keep still.” (For again she had 
winced as she tried to sit up.) “I’ll peel them for you.” 

Positively he waited upon her as if she had been a 


184 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


baby (“from the month”) and he the maternity nurse- 
born-and-not-made. His foresight, his gestures, his big- 
dog gentleness, his consideration struck this girl as though 
she had never before known what it was to be waited upon. 

Ingenuously she thought: “If I’d had a brother, this is 
what he would have been like.” 

3 

He might. Or he might not. A brother may mean 
anything; everything; or nothing. The brother who is 
also the chum brings the nearest unspoilt intimacy in 
which man can approach girl (cutting out the illusive in¬ 
timacy of passion). The brother who is not the chum can 
be the root of all sex-antagonism. Years of solace from 
other people’s brothers may be required to undo the mis¬ 
chief which the “own” brother has wrought at home! 

Between these two poles the average brother is put 
by the average sister in a class apart from men (“Oh, 
you can’t count just the boys!”) . . . He is connected 
with nothing that may lie ahead for her. He, however, 
learns about women from her. (“My sister, I remember, 
always said or did so-and-so.”) 

Roughly the girl with brothers can scarcely be dis¬ 
tinguished from the girl without. 

But the sisterless boy remains in his relation with the 
sister-sex a little handicapped through life. 

To Margaret, the only child, it certainly seemed that 
the big, young man in shirt sleeves kneeling on the sand 
and obviously needing a shave, was the very perfect gen¬ 
tle brother she had missed . . . 


THE MOCK BROTHER 185 

She turned to him. How childishly she exclaimed: 
“You are most awfully good to me!” 

And with what heartening cheerfulness he gave back: 
“Ah, don’t be silly!” 


4 

And still she never guessed the savage annoyance, the 
exasperated suspense, simmering beneath his gentleness for 
her. 

She thought (and in a way she was right) : “He’s re¬ 
served. He’s a very reserved young man. I wonder when 
he will begin to talk to me, like they do on islands, about 
what he really thinks?” 

In spasms of irritation he thought: 

“This has torn it! A night and a day, and now another 
night, left here . . . 

“Did the old blackguard mean this? This is what he 
mapped out for the ‘wretched child.’ I know. So far 
it’s according to programme for her. ‘Work her like a 
black, see she gets food, not too much of it, make up with 
fresh air, and keep her to this side of beach/ That means 
I can’t go off duty . . . 

“Oh, it’s a merry job of work ... As for him, this 
will wash out everything, once he turns up. Where is he? 
Locked up in a lunatic asylum is where he ought to be, 
of course, but what a hope! I bet he’s found the most 
comfortable pub in reach, and that he is spreading him¬ 
self all over interfering with the management at this 
minute. . . . 

“And here I’ve got to stop. . . . We've got to stop. 


186 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“Lord, how I should enjoy burning him like a Guy 
Fawks in that bonfire! 

“He’s getting all the fun out of it, and he’s stuck 
me down as something between a kid’s nurse, a guardian 
angel, and a warder to convicts. And for how long, I’d 
like to know?” 


CHAPTER VH 


MIRROR OF VENUS 

1 

A LL that morning Margaret lay in the eye of the 
sun; Mr. Mount’s handkerchief, wrung out in cold 
cascade water, shielded her forehead. Amazing 
how soon she began to feel that she was restored, and that 
the worst of the ache was over, and that she could help 
once more with the woodpile! 

“No. To-morrow, perhaps. To-day take it easy. 
Now I’m going up that cliff again and you are going to 
promise me to stay lying down here until midday. You 
promise? Good. Very well, set your watch by mine. 
You should be able to tell the time by the height of the 
sun.” 

Incredibly, she slept again until he came back. 

He came back with as little satisfaction to himself as 
he had gone. 

There had been no sign of that unscrupulous old ruf¬ 
fian. 

This was no accident. Had there been accident or mis¬ 
hap, somehow (he knew) word would have been conveyed. 
This was the deliberate, harebrained scheme to let some¬ 
body else take on the nuisance, the corvee of that “infernal 
girl.” 

Very well; oh, very well. He, Mount, would see pres- 
187 


188 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


ently just how plain he could make it to the old man what 
any decent people thought of him. 

Meantime he admitted it was not the girl’s fault; she 
suffered, poor kid! 

She was bucking up. He dropped the tone as to a 
sick puppy. . . . Casual, but friendly, he suggested 
that perhaps Miss Verity might now pick her bathing 
place. He’d gone in early from the Bonfire Creek. She, 
perhaps, would choose the creek of her cave? 

2 

The moment Margaret was alone she made ready for 
that dip, seeing for the first time the sea as a shimmering 
invitation. Ah, blessed relief of getting out of clothes so 
long worn! 

Off these lendings—Guernsey and tweed skirt. Off 
came the dingy, crumbled tricot. Off, the silken elastic 
corset belt. Off, filmy layers of French lingerie—pale 
yellow and once dainty as petals of a new-opened Iceland 
poppy. Ah, but they were the worse for a wreck, and for 
stale scents plus steam yacht atmosphere and an after¬ 
noon of navvy-work! Enthusiastically Margaret peeled 
the wrappings from her, left them held down by stones 
from blowing about on the beach, tucked away with them 
her wrist-watch and clattered gadgets, and turned to the 
smiling sea. 

Did a thought come to her of Deauville bathing kit? 
Vermilion rubber turban; scarlet satin, skirted tunic and 
knickers, patterned with white dolphins and ending in 
opera length stockings of scarlet silk? With these she 


MIRROR OF VENUS 


189 


had worn beach shoes of white kid laced criss-cross up the 
calf; she had worn a wrap of white proofed satin sten¬ 
cilled with gigantic orange starfish. Marvellous it had 
looked in the Taller photograph, billowing, flapping in 
the breeze against a glimpse of Plage, of stagy Casino ar¬ 
chitecture, stripy bathing tents, flapping flags, terraces 
cascading with flowers—in fact, all that ever went with 
bains de mer. 

Nothing of this, here. 

Margaret, wearing only her pearl string, ran down 
the virgin beach. 


3 

The kiss of the waves struck quite sharply against her; 
the untroubled water was much less warm than she had 
expected from the balmy air, the bright sunshine. She 
swam only a little distance out, fearing strange currents: 
fearing, too, something that inevitably turned up in all 
those desert-island books! The ominous black triangle 
above the blue water! 

But Mr. Mount had said nothing about sharks. He 
had simply remarked: “Scream if you’re drowned, won’t 
you?” and had gone on whittling one of those half-fin¬ 
ished wooden forks with his back to the bay. 

As she ran back from her swim, she felt fitter than 
she remembered feeling. She didn’t miss that wooden 
curvette of hot water for a bather’s feet, which Deauville 
or Dinard considers a necessity of life. Again she went 
back to a childish habit, learnt when she bathed im- 


190 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


promptu in some lonely spot. Taking a handful of dry 
fine sand she rubbed herself down with it. 

A beach, a pool should suit a pretty girl as not even 
her prettiest frocks can do. Such a young Venus should 
have emerged from the foam of that exquisite lone shore! 
The build that Margaret then was looks well in a pen-and- 
ink comment by Hemjic on some coming fashion. But 
choir-boy-and-coffin-lid effects should not have come unto 
these yellow sands. “Really, I’ve got frightfully skinny,” 
thought Margaret, glancing down at herself. “My legs 
are just bone. And my ribs! Not pretty. . . .” 

Her first self-criticism! The first time she had con¬ 
sidered her own shape except as that on which she showed 
off her clothes. Clothes and face—these were all of her 
appearance that she had cherished. Clothes! never have 
they been such a pre-occupation as now. Their lines, 
their movements, their petal textures, their tropic-bird 
tints, their significance, their transcience have now a liter¬ 
ature and an art to themselves. Good; provided the ex¬ 
perts do not forget what it is that is more than rai¬ 
ment. 

Margaret turned to the mirror on her chain, reflecting 
her small face—lovely, although its ivory pedestal had 
been allowed to wilt under modish disguises. 

“Why should I worry though? Stuck here on this des¬ 
ert island until the next ship comes—” Straightening her 
back, she held her head up. Involuntarily she went 
through a few movements of long-neglected exercises. 
“Why should I care a hoot what I look like here?” 

From behind the rocks she heard Mr. Mount’s low- 
pitched humming as he worked: 


MIRROR OF VENUS 


191 


“Oh, Mauricot, Mauricot—” 

(“Why did your mother 
Turn you out so handsome 
If she never meant you 
To please a sweetheart’s eye?”) 

“When he goes up the cliff again I’ll wash my things 
out under that cascade. They’ll dry quickly in this sun. 
But I feel so fresh—I can’t put them on again as they 
are.” So, drawing rubber boots over stockingless feet— 
slipping on tweed skirt and blue Guernsey—here she was 
in the garments which were to be her island kit for days 
—for weeks! Grimier garments, rolled into a heap, she 
stowed under a rock crevice. 

Then she turned—to ask her first favour of that man. 


4 

“Hullo, Miss Verity. Enjoyed your bathe?” 

“Rather!” 

This voice was new. In London her tired, listless 
enunciation (the syllables trailed behind her like ends of 
a dragging stole) had helped to put Mount off the “in¬ 
fernal girl.” Since the wreck the “wretched child” had 
chucked that drawl—in tones of real z*est now she ad¬ 
mitted enjoyment. 

“Good. And look—” He held out the rude fork, 
three-pronged, roughly rounded at the base and sand- 
polished. Upon this Mount gazed with that passionate 
reverence of any amateur carpenter for any work, how¬ 
ever rudimentary, of his own hand. 


192 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“How splendid!” admired Margaret sincerely. “Mr. 
Mount, I wanted to ask you—do you think you could make 
me something? A wooden comb?” 

He frowned doubtfully. 

“Couldn’t you? My hair is so awful. All my hairpins 
have dropped out except two. And it’s all matted. Does 
feel so horrible. What can I do about it?” 

“M’m—” 

“In those desert island books the people always comb 
their hair out with the backbone of a fish they’ve just 
eaten. Either their hairs must have been quite different 
from mine, or their fish backbones weren’t like those trout 
ones; so I wondered if you could carve one out foj- me? 
Or—you haven’t got a pocket comb with you, by any 
chance ?” 

“Should I look like this,” demanded Mount bitterly, 
with a hand on his own golliwog head, “if I had? How¬ 
ever, I’ll see what I can do about hacking out a comb for 
you. Rather a rough effort, I’m afraid. As a matter of 
fact, I just found this bit of board here—” 

“Washed ashore from the wreck of the ‘Sweetheart 

II’?” 

“Er—this.” 

He took up from the sand at his feet the flat frag¬ 
ment about three feet in length. “Might get something 
out of that. I’m afraid it would look rather like a hay- 
rake.” 

“But if I look like the hay!” She shook that brown 
tangle on her shoulders. “Anything is better than this. 
Will you lend me your knife for a few minutes first?” 

“What for?” 


MIRROR OF VENUS 


193 


“To cut my hair.” 

“You can’t do that, Miss Verity. It can’t be done.” 

“I can—” 

“But you mustn’t.” 

“I shall have to. It’s short in front already. I must 
cut all those odious straggly bits at the back. Why, 
think! They’ve not been combed out for weeks and weeks 
and weeks—for however long I was on that yacht? How 
long was that?” 

This he evaded. “You can’t chop off your hair, you 
know. Think of the row there’d be—” 

“Who from?” 

“Why—” 

“Mr. Mount, there’s nobody here but you and those 
seagulls to see how my hair is done.” 

“Then why mind leaving it as it is?” 

“Feels so beastly.” 

“But look here, the moment we get away from this 
dam—I mean, if we get taken off by a ship in time—” 

“It would all have to be cut short at once before I 
could do anything with it,” she argued, tugging at the 
sticky-feeling mass that seemed already like skeins of 
brown jumper silk after the kitten had finished with it. 
“Ages ago I’d have bobbed it, but for Cynthia thinking it 
would be more original and old-world to keep it long. 
Hideously uncomfortable it is now. I can’t even tie it 
back. I do think you might lend me—” 

“How do you imagine you’ll manage if I do lend you 
my knife? Take up a bit at a time, I suppose, and saw 
through? I thought so. Well, if it’s got to be done at 
all, you may as well let me do it properly.” 


194 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


When Margaret said, “Very well, will you, please?” 
it was not particularly meekly, but it was more meekly 
than she had ever before spoken to a young man. 

She sat on the low red rock nearest to the flickering 
fire. Mount, short-sleeved and unkempt, bent over her 
with a grimly intent face; newly sharpened knife between 
his teeth. Breaking across his knee that piece of board, 
he fitted Margaret’s long brown straggles neatly enough 
between the straight edges. 

Memories came back to her of how she had been wont 
to get her hair “done.” Softly furnished cubicle, sultry 
with the breath of pine shampoo, henna, hot curling irons, 
jasmine brilliantine. Obsequious enquiries from the coif¬ 
feur: “Are you perfectly comfortable like that, madam 
. . . might I ask you to lean just a trifle forward? . . • 
Any particular shampoo you would prefer? . . . Too hot, 
madam? ... A dash of cold to finish? . . . Does that 
feel quite dry now? ... Is that where you are accus¬ 
tomed to make the parting? . . . Would you care to have 
a manicure while I am dressing the hair? . . . Just a very 
slight wave?” 

Actually she could have laughed at this contrast. 

With that unique tool that had served as fish-cleaner 
and wood-carver, the man cut through the girl’s thick 
jungle of hair, following the edge of the board. Once he 
tugged it badly. “Sorry, oh, sorry, Miss Verity.” 
Finally he brought away boards and tangle together. 
“There!” 

“Thanks.” She shook her head like a mountain pony. 
Around her nape the brown crop twirled like an O-Cedar 
Mop. 


MIRROR OF VENUS 


195 


“Jolly!” 

“About twelve she looks now,” thought Mount. “What 
an infernal shame! All thanks to that old scoundrel, too. 
Sacrificing her hair. More comfortable, Miss Verity?” 

“Rather,” she laughed, pulling out the inevitable mir¬ 
ror. “They couldn’t have done it better at Hill’s,” she 
declared childishly, picking up and putting together the 
hacked-off strands that seemed now like seaweed. “I 
wonder, Mr. Mount—” 

“What do you wonder now?” 

“Only how often I shall have to get you to be my hair¬ 
dresser again before we are rescued?” 

“I wonder, too.” 

“I’m sure it’s time something happened. In those books 
things are always happening. Packing-cases from the 
wreck—I do wish one of those would come ashore, with a 
brush and a comb in it, don’t you?” 

“Yes, and with a razor and a stick of soap—” Poor 
young man! This was to be his deepest trial during the 
days that were to follow. 

Sleeping in the open he enjoyed. Toiling like a navvy 
was a change. Being condemned to food as monotonous as 
the menu of a caged tiger—that did not mean as much to 
him as it might to some men. Boredom; the boredom of 
keeping to these set bounds: well! had not Mount been 
educated at an English public school on compulsory 
cricket? And if the object of this dreary game is not to 
render the youth of our nation immune against any fur¬ 
ther form of protracted ennui, what (a woman asks) can 
be its purpose? On our playing fields the British are 
trained to become the world’s colonists; what outpost of 


196 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Empire could seem, in comparison, dull? Months of 
eventlessnesss Mr. Mount could have borne—but without 
a shave . . . ! 

And to this he was condemned. 

Day by day the outline of his firm, pleasantly moulded 
round chin was to become blurred by what our fathers 
describe as a “Newgate frill.” How he writhed under this 
detail—the one privation which “got” him—the girl could 
not realize. She got to know so well, however, the move¬ 
ment of his hand up to that young beard. 

The day came when she thought: “Shall I say something 
about it? Shall I ask him if he would like to look at it 
in my little glass?” 

She did not ask. 

This was days later. 

For days were going on and the amateur warder was 
still in charge of the deceived castaway, and still, still, 
there was no sign of other human life on that part of the 
island. 

“Surely,” sighed the girl, “something must happen. In 
the ‘Admirable Crichton,’ it was that gunboat that landed. 
Surely something of that sort is due to happen soon?” 

“It surely is, Miss Verity,” agreed the sorely-tired 
Mount. 

They waited. . . . 

The days went by towards the day of the sighting of 
that ship. 


CHAPTER VIII 


VOICE OF THE PAST 

1 

T HE first forty-eight hours after the (so-called) 
wreck seemed long as a fortnight. So do all first 
days in unfamiliar places. Alike the first week 
of term or of holidays seems unending; afterwards they 
slip away. 

Here, on the island (which, as far as Margaret was 
concerned, remained the Desert Island in the Pacific— 
for young Mount, held by his word, did not disillusion 
her)—here the days, lengthening into weeks, all slipped 
away. Mauve-and-silver evening succeeded blue-and- 
golden day swiftly as though a magician had waved it 
past with a wand. 

No sooner was the breakfast caught (vainly had Mar¬ 
garet tried to learn his knack from the born poacher who 
could lure trout into his fingers, she, crouching behind his 
shoulder beside the brook could only watch his art), no 
sooner were the mussels collected and the savage delight¬ 
ful meal cooked and eaten, than there was the fire to see 
to. Then, behold, the sun was high in the blue, and it was 
time for her swim (she bathed at mid-day; he early). 
Then came Margaret’s sun bath in her own creek, with 
exercises that she now ran through daily as she had been 
made to do as a little girl. 


197 


198 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


She did not yet realize that she enjoyed an existence 
stripped of all but the barest necessities of life—fire, 
water, food, rudimentary shelter and human companion¬ 
ship ! Just as her appetite for food (long years in abey¬ 
ance) was now a thrilling novelty, so was her appetite for 
other simple joys. Sun, physical energy, love of adven¬ 
ture were wakening in the girl who was—two Margarets. 
One was the Margaret of Hill Street, Ritz, Berkeley, 
Rolls, Reville’s, Embassy, Bond Street, Oddleys . . . 
but the other Margaret, of Sussex cottage and garden— 
the sturdy girl-baby of whom young Verity had been so 
proud, the buoyant twelve-year-old to whom the Zoo was 
dissipation and whose first use for money was to buy pres¬ 
ents for her mother—that child was after all not dead. 

Out of the wreck she rose! 

2 

If it seems an unbelievably quick change from the 
handful of neurotic refuse into the healthy young animal 
that could again feel its life in every limb, then remem¬ 
ber one thing: 

We make our constitutions and our tendencies in our 
first ten years of life. 

Those crucial years had seen Margaret into a supple 
tom-boy abounding in vitality and go. Nine subsequent 
years had overlaid, but had not smothered the healthy 
roots. Thriving shoots now put out to the fresh air and 
to the sunshine which Margaret thought so tropical. 

Fortunately the weather held up all the time of what 
Margaret, quaintly enough, began to call “this holiday.” 


VOICE OF THE PAST 


199 


Call back to your minds the most primitive holiday you 
have ever enjoyed, in the most romantic, the wildest, the 
least civilized cranny of these our own islands. Always 
civilization has drawn its trail (and its cork) over every¬ 
thing. Somewhere civilization has stamped its armorial 
crest: the empty tin. Under the loveliest hedge you have 
found an old boot. The remotest cottage has spelt tea- 
things with a gilt shamrock at the bottom of the cup, 
washing-up, a lamp (always wanting filling), the prob¬ 
lem of clean towels, when does the post come in? is that 
Wednesday’s Daily Mail? and similar questions. 

Not here. Not on Margaret’s Island! 

No letters, no bed-making, no dish-washing, nc land¬ 
lady whose poor husband always suffered with such shock¬ 
ing indigestion, no marketing, no forgetting to order the 
carrier’s cart, no waiting for another consignment of 
bathing-costumes to arrive, nothing that is usually in¬ 
separable from life on holiday in “a little, unspoiled place 
by the sea. . . .” 

Further, no holiday feuds. For, call back the merriest, 
most congenial party of which you yourself have ever 
made one. Always—or practically always—it has been 
complicated by the Others. They’ve wanted to play golf, 
or they’ve wanted to climb or they’ve wanted to stay at 
home and play bridge, or they have gone off together, or 
they have gone off alone, or they haven’t got on, or they 
have “got off” ... or they have been silent, talked too 
much, been always there, never turned up—everything at 
the wrong moment or in the wrong way . . . Always 
the Others; the marring, jarring Others. 

The perfect holiday party consists of two—yourself 


200 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


and the man (or girl) with whom at the moment you hap¬ 
pen to be in sympathy. 

Is it easy to arrange this in our present phase of civil¬ 
ization ? Is it ? 

But something like it had been arranged for Margaret. 
The Others, the perpetual unmanageable Others, had 
dropped out of her ken and ceased to exist. Here, she 
found herself permanently with the one, the perfect com¬ 
panion. 

(Still she was quite unconscious that she found him 
this.) 

She did not think about it; she did not even think. 
Often she never even thought of her mother. As for her 
friendships, these belonged to the existence of another 
human being. 

Sometimes, in lonely sunlight among calling gulls, she 
repeated, aloud, names: “Claude! Claude Oddley . . . 
Cynthia.” 

These meant nothing; seemed names of characters in 
a book read and half forgotten long ago. 

3 

“I wish we had something to read,” Margaret said one 
day as they sat perched up on a ledge half-way up the 
cliff. It was a sort of natural cromlech or porch-shaped 
niche, sunny, warm, out of the wind—not that there was 
much wind. Anyhow, there they sat basking, looking to¬ 
wards the sea, the ever-moving, the blank. “Do you re¬ 
member, Mr. Mount, the favourite discussion, ‘If you 


VOICE OF THE PAST 


201 


were to be cast on a desert island where you were al¬ 
lowed to take—’” 

“—‘two books, which two would you choose ?”’ smiled 
young Mount. “Yes, rather; well I know it. And the 
people who say at once ‘Shakespeare and the Bible’! And 
the purists who say: ‘The Bible isn’t a book, it’s a library.* 
And the people who choose ‘Wisden and the Oxford Book 
of Verse’—and the others who say: ‘Mrs. Beeton’s Cook¬ 
ery Book and Paul Morant’s Ouvert la Nuit’—” 

“And we’ve nothing,” concluded Margaret, not incon¬ 
solably. “Not even a bill. Nor a program of the music 
hall left in my coat pocket. Not even a letter to remind 
me what writing looks like—” 

“Ha! That reminds me,” he exclaimed with a little 
laugh. “I’d forgotten. I have, Miss Verity.” 

“Oh, what?” 

“Letters. Quite a lot of letters I’ve got.” 

“Here?” Startled, the large eyes gazed upon this 
young man with his shirt-sleeved back against the rocky 
wall; turned from him to the empty creek, to the lovely, 
lonely landscape. 

“How could you possibly have got any letters—” 

“Oh!” Mount was annoyed to realize he felt guilty 
. . . idiotic. Since he had made up his mind to go on 
living this fib doggedly until guard was relieved, he ought 
to be able to do it without feeling uncomfortable every 
time this wretched kid in his charge rubbed in her own 
deception. He explained shortly: “I only mean letters I 
had on me.” 

“When we were wrecked?” 


202 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“Er—yes. I had put them aside before. Stuck them 
into a pocket here.” His hand went again to that in¬ 
valuable webbing belt—bought, he had told her, from a 
sailor in Montevideo. “A packet of letters; ‘a voice,’ 
don’t you know, ‘out of the past.’ ” 

“From the girl you are engaged to?” asked Margaret. 

“Lord, no!” He laughed a little. “They are from a 
young woman, though. Not to me. They were to poor 
old Charles, my brother; handed over to me with our 
mother’s things. Would you care to look at them?” 

“Do please show me.” 

Together, on that milk-warm island afternoon when the 
sun blushed rosily golden on the olive grove at the top of 
their cliff, these companions studied that thin bundle of 
tinted note-paper, which Archie Mount took out of his 
belt. The paper was stamped with a golden oval en¬ 
closing a capital “M.” The handwriting upon them was 
childishly curly, for these were the six letters which “had 
greatly cheered” the last weeks of a young soldier’s life. 
Five of them began: “My dear Mr. Mount”; they ended: 
“Your affectionate friend, Margaret Verity.” 

Archie Mount read the first letter aloud: 

I promised to tell you about the Zoo and the Matinee which 
was perfectly lovely. Oh, how I enjoyed myself, you can’t 
think!!!! Do you like this note-paper? Isn’t it beautiful? 
I got it at Harrod’s because there was lots of money over 
from my cheque and so I was able to shop and I got some 
lovely handkerchiefs with V on for my mother and I thought 
it would be nice to get this special paper to write to you on as 
you said you liked getting letters. Some of it is pink and 
some pale-blue like an egg, and there is a mauve, which I 


VOICE OF THE PAST 


203 


don’t like very much. What is your favourite colour? The 
small Cats house was the most beastly thing you ever smelt, 
in fact it nearly made me sea-sick. Which is an awful feel¬ 
ing. Dear Mr. Mount you ought to have been in the parrot 
house, which I did so love. Have you ever heard the talking 
miner? My mother says it isn’t spelt like that only she isn’t 
quite sure either, so I must put it as it is pronounced. You 
will know what it is. When we were leaning over looking at 
the antelopes my tarn o’ shanter fell over into the den, wasn’t 
it awful, but such a nice keeper went in after it and got it 
up. Poor fellow he was quite lame from the war, but he 
hopped about like anything. The scene I like best in Peter 
Pan was the Mermaid’s rock which was gorgeous!!!! Them 
all diving in. Of course we couldn’t stop to see the sea-lions 
fed because it was three o’clock. We had tea in the theatre. 
I do love teas in theatres, don’t you? I should always have 
them. I suppose you have been to lots of theatres, I think it 
is ridiculous to be so excited you couldn’t sleep, but you know 
this was my first and I did so adore it. Sitting quite close to 
us with their grown-ups there were two little boys one of 
them enjoyed nearly as much as I did, but the other was 
too young, all he said was when he saw the window 
that Peter Pan flies in at, showing the night sky outside was, 
“Is it dark? Is it dark in the street already because when 
we came in a minute ago it was bright daylight?” I thought 
it was awfully sad when Mrs. Darling thinks it is only the 
ghosts of her babies coming back, it made me think how awful 
for my own mummy if I died or anything horrid, and I quite 
choked. Wendy’s little house in the trees was ripping. I 
forgot to tell you about the monkeys in the Zoo which have 
such pathetic eyes but I daresay they are quite happy really. 
I wonder if you are enjoying Switzerland. Please do write 
to me about winter sports and please give my kind regards to 


204 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Wallace. I am afraid I must end now as it is my bed-time, 
so with love and hoping you will soon be quite well, I remain 
Your affectionate friend, 

Margaret Verity. 

In the short silence following a gull called. Mount 
looked up. The big-eyed oval face of his listener had 
changed. 

“I say. Did you mind . . . perhaps I ought not to 
have—” 

“Please do read another,” begged Margaret, setting 
her soft mouth. “I was only thinking what a long time— 
no, not since we’ve been here. Before then. Such a long 
time since I had been to a theatre or any show alone with 
Mums. . . .” (This from the lips that had exclaimed: 
“Rubbish, Violet, you’re not going to make me drop my 
friends! When I say a thing, I mean a thing.”) 

She said now: “I’d like you to read.” 

He went on to the next letter to his brother: 

Thank you so awfully much for the picture post card of 
people ski-ing which must be so perfectly heavenly. It is so 
lovely having a friend abroad to write to who writes back. 
Only it made me quite sore envying you for being in the 
place and seeing all those things. And fancy there being 
some quite children, years and years younger than me. How 
I do wish I could go out there. I loathe England in the 
winter. I don’t really but this is what I heard a lady say 
who came to tea. She was one of those awful Clergyman’s 
wives quite new, the most eccentric one we have had. She 
wore such a large twisted gold brooch. I don’t think it was 
real gold, and there were eight large rubies in it, I don’t 


VOICE OF THE PAST 


205 


think they were real rubies and there was a place for another 
one only there wasn’t one there. Mother has just read this bit 
and says it is cruel and ill natured to make fun of people’s 
dress and appearance and are we so perfect ourselves. So I 
won’t, but dear Mr. Mount, you would have laughed so I had 
to describe her to you just a little. You said the gaming- 
room was stiff with freaks who ought to be at Mothers’ Meet¬ 
ings so I thought how amused you would be at this one hoping 
you are nearly well now from your affectionate friend 

Margaret Verity. 

Another letter he read in his pleasantly modulated, 
reserved-sounding voice: 

Dear Mr. Mount , How are you I hope quite well? Thank 
you so very much for your letter but do you mind writing in 
ink because the pencil was so very faint I couldn’t quite read 
all the words and I asked my mother and there were some of 
them she couldn’t either. She was quite upset because she 
couldn’t. When I had to write in pencil to Daddy when I 
was quite a little girl my mother sometimes went over it in 
ink so that he should know what I had tried to put. We used 
to have to put c/o G. P. O. because we never knew where 
his ship might be. Last night I was awake all night nearly 
because there was thunder in the night and I am dreadfully 
afraid of thunder. I do try not to be because of being a 
sailor’s daughter but there is generally one thing one is afraid 
of. I do so try but every time I hear that rumbling I can’t 
help it I would rather have tigers in my room so I went into 
my mother’s bed. This is a very short measly letter and 
please excuse the blot as we are in the middle of making 
toffee for the Sale of Work. It is being got up by the lady 
with the not all there ruby brooch. You remember I told you 


206 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


that when you get to know her she is rather decent. Your 
affectionate friend, 

Margaret. 

Here Mr. Mount cleared his throat. 

“Read the others yourself, will you, Miss Verity?” 

“Aloud?” 

“Er—no, if you don’t mind. I think I’m going to get 
another swim while it is so warm.” 

He left her sitting there, bright-eyed, to read the let¬ 
ter that had been at the bottom of the packet: 

“My Dear Charles, 

“It feels awfully queer to be putting Christian names to 
grown-ups and rather cheek, you are the only grown-up I 
have ever Christian named, but as it said in your last letter 
can’t you call me anything but Mr. Mount just for once, I 
will, and if you don’t like it you can just hastily say and I 
will put Mr. Mount in all my other letters which I write. 
Please will you thank Wallace for writing the letter that you 
dictated because you had sprained your hand. He writes 
beautifully so clear much more easy to read than yours really 
if you don’t mind. It will now soon be spring and all the 
thousands of little boys who come to Lewes to go back to 
prep, schools for the Easter term were simply crowding the 
train yesterday when Mums and I were there. Do you re¬ 
member the last time we were at that station was on that won¬ 
derful day when we saw the Zoo and you and Peter Pan and 
everything, such a lot of things always happening at once? 
Do you know Mr. Mount (crossed out) Do you know Charles, 
we heard the most awful scene happened to-day at Victoria 
station. One of the School trains started before anybody 


VOICE OF THE PAST 


207 


knew it had, two minutes before the time or something and 
there were a lot of the mothers in the carriages arranging the 
luggage on the rack and a lot of boys outside reading the 
rainbow and looking at new boys and that sort of thing and 
quite calmly without a whistle or a green flag or anything the 
train started before they could get out carrying all the boys’ 
mothers non stop to Lewes. Wasn’t it awful for them and 
leaving lots of their boys all loose on the platform. They 
had to come on by the 5.15. There were two brothers, and 
one boy was taken and the other left. Like in the Bible only 
he had tea at Rumplemayers with one of the mothers of a 
boy he knew so he didn’t mind. I don’t think there is any 
more news except that the snow is melting away from the 
snowdrops in our garden. I will enclose you two snowdrops 
for you to put in your button hole. I don’t think more will 
go for threepence it is a long way to Switzerland so I hope 
they will not arrive withered, but if they do just put them in 
a saucer of warm water with a little salt and they will re¬ 
vive. Good night, dear Charles, with love from 

“Margaret.” 


This had been the child’s last letter to her friend 
abroad. 

The date on the postmark showed that it had arrived at 
that Swiss sanatorium just two days before Charles 
Mount had gone on to where no letters more would reach 
him. 

Letters of an impulsive, affectionate, unclever, unspoilt 
bud—Margaret! 

To her, now reading them, it seemed as if she had come 
such an endless journey; she looked back on a nature so 


208 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


different! Touched, stung, she thought: “How horrid I 
have got! I was going to have been so nice to Mums and 
everybody. . . . How different one grows up.” 

But Mount, springing down into his own creek, was 
thinking: “Uncommonly like that still! . . . At the bot¬ 
tom of her heart, she’s just that same kid. . . 


CHAPTER IX 


ROMANCE AND REALITY 

1 

I KNOW what my readers must think who have read so 
far of this story. 

You sum it up in the word—“Inevitable!” 

You think: “Here are two people, normal, young, 
good-looking, thrown together on this island beach— 
whether it’s really a desert island or not doesn’t matter 
at all! The young woman still fondly imagines it is, and 
the young man has to play up. You can see that by now 
he’s practically played himself into his role. Doesn’t 
mind it either. Likes the job. Sunset, midday heat, cool 
of lovely gloaming finds them always together. Here’s 
the girl blooming out into fresh good looks every day. 
What else can you expect? 

Personally, I take young Mount’s word for it that al¬ 
though he had left off resenting the “infernal girl,” al¬ 
though he was intrigued, delighted over the swift changes 
of body and mind already wrought in her—although he 
found her touchingly plucky, pleasant, good-humoured, 
companionable—all this was still liking; no more. 

But it was coming, you think? 

“Inevitable!” you repeat ? 

Fated, that this young girl emerging into physical 
health and vitality should begin to attach herself to this 

209 


210 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


young man, personable even if he were dressed like a deck¬ 
hand on a tramp steamer, wore hair like any Cafe Royal 
poet and a beard . . . who shall say how many days old ? 

Why beat about this bush (not his beard, but the situ¬ 
ation) ? 

If after these days of real primitive companionship 
they were not yet in love—it must have been growing obvi¬ 
ous that man or girl or both must soon become in love. 
You really think it is as obvious and simple as all that? 

You still insist—“inevitable”? 

Ah, but wait— 

Please come back and listen to a conversation on this 
very same subject. 

2 

This had been some time before. A day before the ab¬ 
duction—I mean, the benevolent removal of Margaret. 
It was in Nice; I had gone for a walk in the country above 
that toyish town with young Mr. Mount. 

Those who think it easy to draw out the confidence of 
that modern young have not met his type! It’s he 
who “draws out.” 

At my first tentative words upon the coming island ad¬ 
venture, he turned upon me his gentlest smile and the 
reply: “Matchmaking?” 

“Ah, you know you are,” he persisted to my denial. 
“You think: ‘Here will be these two in ideal surroundings; 
the girl at least imagining that she has been swept away 
for keeps.’ You think that young man, once she is right 


ROMANCE AND REALITY 211 

away from civilization, will represent Romance. You 
think—” 

“Mr. Mount, you seem curiously sure of my thoughts!” 

“I am so sorry. If I am boring you we will change 
the subject—” 

“We will do nothing of the kind. I want to hear what 
you do think.” 

“On your head be it. I think you consider that I am 
dead certain to fall desperately in love with this young 
lady because, ‘with any luck for Mr. Lloyd’s plan, I shall 
watch her change, under my eyes, from a spoilt wreck 
back again into a natural human being.’ You expect 
that vanity will come into it, because I shall have my 
share in the change. You add propinquity, sea air, moon¬ 
light solitude, waves on the shore. You don’t see how 
anything else can happen but that the end of the adven¬ 
ture should leave me engaged to Miss Verity—” 

I countered: “You do not even leave me the knowledge 
that you yourself are already engaged.” (He was, you 
remember.) 

“Matchmakers don’t think that matters. You tell your¬ 
self, ‘Well, engagement isn’t marriage anyhow.’ It’s a 
time of probation only. Nowadays the modern young 
think no more of getting engaged than of drawing the 
girl as a partner in the mixed doubles! And, besides, 
you’ve ‘never seen this girl young Mount’s engaged to,’ ” 
continued young Mount, deadly mild. “ ‘Perhaps it was 
one of those boy-and-girl entanglements that come un¬ 
ravelled at the first touch of reality—’ ” 

“Was it a boy and girl entanglement?” 


212 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“Ah, that interests you!” exclaimed this disconcerting 
youth, who, the more he said, showed himself the more 
deeply reserved. If he talked it must be of other people, 
not of himself. Never of himself! “You” he accused 
me, “read serials. Bound to come out like that in any 
serial. There will be a fascinating new instalment.” 

“You are unfair. You’re one of these people who can¬ 
not give offence; you know it and trade on it. A serial, 
indeed. What do you mean?” 

“For synopsis of previous chapters, see page eight,” 
insisted Mr. Mount, smiling prettily down upon me. “But 
as this is not a romantic serial, shall I tell you the reality 
—shall I tell you what is likely to happen?” 

“Pray do.” 

“In real life, Miss Verity will come back from her ad¬ 
venture as her uncle intends: a different girl. Fit, jolly 
and in great looks. She’ll take up her old life—oh, no, 
not life as before. Not that treadmill of indoor arti¬ 
ficialities. She’ll have learnt how to look after herself. 
She’ll have learnt how to enjoy herself. She’ll chuck-over 
doing it. She’ll chuck the wrong people. So far it will 
tally . . . but, here’s where the programme alters—” 

“How?” 

“Well, she won't have learnt to look upon me as the 
one man in the world for her. That is tradition. It does 
not happen. It won’t. I am sorry to crash your 
romance—” 

“Serial,” I murmured. “But since you know so much, 
Mr. Mount, may I beg you to tell me what will happen? 
Who will become Margaret’s romance?” 

“Young Oddley, perhaps.” 


ROMANCE AND REALITY 


213 


<i CIaiide? That marionette with waterworks inside? 
It's to save her from Claude and Cynthia that the crazy 
scheme is evolved. Do you imagine that after a girl had 
been humanized she would still contemplate a Claude ?” 

"“Claude isn’t so bad,” protested Mr. Mount. “Isn’t 
real love and that supposed to make a man of a fellow?” 

U I hate you,” I told him. “How thankful I am you 
were not there when I was a girL . . . At least Claude 
is less likely to happen to her than vou are.” 

“Plenty of men to happen to a girl like that. Where 
there were dozens before, there will be scores after the 
cure. And. by Jove!—I have thought of the very man 
for her! That red-haired youngster, who brought her 
the Peke. Charming fellow, that.” 

“Eric? That undergraduate? Who can’t even talk 
English? Who has never heard of anything that hap¬ 
pened before nineteen-nine teen? You will expect Mar¬ 
garet to take seriously a boy like that?” 

“A nice boy,” pronounced Mr. Mount, with his baffling, 
nonchalant reserve. “A girl might do a lot worse than 
von ng Eric. But in any case he is a good deal more like 
what you can expect to happen. . . .** 

We turned back towards dejeuner. 

3 

But to return to th i ngs after time had begun to speed 
up on that island. 

Once, Margaret said: “Mr. Mount, we seem to have 
been marooned here for months! Yet in another way it 
seems only hours; seems only a minute ago since we 


214 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


watched that glorious red sunset last night. And now 
look! the sun is beginning to go down again.” 

Yes, quickly the golden day had gone. . . . 

Once, just after he had said “good night,” young 
Mount found himself opening his mouth to remark: 
“We’re always saying ‘Good night’ in this blessed place.” 

Afterwards he couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t said it. 

It would have made Margaret laugh. She laughed 
often now. So much more intensely was she living in 
every nerve; yet so much more restfully! Continually she 
was doing something that used up what had been an inert, 
ailing young body; so that at night she sank into black- 
velvet unconsciousness and slept the stars round, slept the 
sun up. 

By day she worked and ran about; she stacked up 
wood, she made grottos like a child, starting a shell col¬ 
lection, too. She experimentalized with the island’s aro¬ 
matic herbs. She improved her diving. She raced Mr. 
Mount, this adopted brother, from rock to rock on the 
sands. She made naive ornaments with seabirds’ plumage, 
berries threaded on a cut-off, smoothed-out strand of her 
own hair. Tiny trifles like that delighted her. All the 
while she felt life pulse by in a rhythmic monotone of 
well-being. Nothing would happen . . . never mind. 

Then, when she had thus resigned herself, something 
happened. 


CHAPTER X 


LONG DISTANCE CALL 


1 


I T happened when she was alone on the beach. 

Mr. Mount had gone up-cliff, ostensibly to hack 
boughs from the eucalyptus—actually, I must tell 
you, with his usual forlorn hope of waylaying Mr. 


Lloyd. . . . 

To think that the old scoundrel might all the time be 
almost within a stone’s throw of his niece and her reluc¬ 
tant warder! ... It was rather much . . . . 

Meanwhile Margaret (who had been of all girls the 
most chaotically untidy about her room, and who now had 
become curiously orderly regarding the caves and the 
shore), had finished pottering “tidying” in the creek. 
Here always, now, the fuel-piles were neatly stacked; 
always the fish-bones buried. No litter of leaves or twigs 
was allowed. She had made a rude hearth with flat stones 
arranged in a semicircle about the bonfire. Now she was 
sweeping it with a broom she had made herself. This 
was new. She had collected those twigs of a size, had 
herself stripped them of leaves and bound them together, 
had selected a straight bit of branch handle. Quite a 
creditable garden-broom it made. He had not seen it. 
She raised her eyes towards the slope down which he 
would appear. No sign yet of the big, dishevelled, grace¬ 
ful figure. 


215 


216 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Casually and fleetingly her glance turned to the bay — 1 
and there she saw “It”— 

The traditional smudge on the horizon. . . . 

The steamer showed black on the blue, with a tiny grey 
feather of smoke trailing away from it. Yes, a steamer 
proceeding rapidly towards the North! . . . Seen from 
where Margaret stood she looked perhaps as long as the 
girl’s own forefinger. 

“A big ship,” gasped Margaret aloud. “A ship come 
to take us off the island!” 

This was all according to schedule in the desert island 
books. 

The castaway, trembling with excitement, swayed first 
backwards then forwards— 

She rather lost her head. Book castaways retain 
theirs with such ease! Margaret Verity did not. 

She gasped, swayed about, for quite three seconds. She 
ejaculated: “Now, why isn’t Mr. Mount here? Why has 
he got to be up the cliff?” The next thought that tumbled 
through her brain was: “Why haven’t we got a great 
beacon blazing for the people on the ship to see? Always 
he put it off. . . .” Next: “They won’t see the bon¬ 
fire!” Next: “I shall have to wave something. I shall 
have to wave something.” The memory came of cast¬ 
aways tearing shirts to use as flags. . . . 

She ran into her own cave; rushed up to those crevices 
in the rocks; dragged out the French tricot frock, ruined 
for ever now by the Cascade Laundry. Black monkeys 
had “run” all over it; it was of every shape and several 
lengths. As frock, it was a dingy, grey unsuccess; but 
at least it would do as flag. 


LONG DISTANCE CALL 


217 

She tied its sleeves to the straight ilex branch which 
young Mount used to stir up his bonfire. She tied it, 
flag-fashion. She raised the bough; thought hastily: “No, 
no! that won’t do—that certainly won’t do—I shall have 
to be high up somewhere—” 

Clutching the flag, she made her way blindly up the 
cliff. She scrambled on to a high red boulder, dragging 
her impromptu banner. 

There, frantically, she waved and waved; called “Ship 
ahoy!” but her voice failed in her throat. Higher above 
her head she flapped her flag. Her eyes fixed themselves 
desperately on the horizon, “ willing ” whoever was on 
that steamer to signal a response. She could not tell me 
how far away that vessel must have been; two—three 
miles? From that distance, surely, whoever was keeping 
a lookout must have seen the frantically waving patch of 
white against red’ 

“A-hoy — 99 

Too far off to hear; they must see? They would see 
directly. ... 

Imagine the vehemently excited waif, calling, waving, 
willing that vessel. That vessel meant help, human beings, 
her mother, home, civilization, comforts, getting away 
from this desolate solitary rock of a place— 

2 

An irrelevant thought leapt up somewhere not in Mar¬ 
garet’s mind at all; from further than that smoke-drawn 
spiral: 

“I don’t want to get away from here ’ Wish I needn’t. 


218 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


I shall come back. Some day I shall have to come back 
to where I’ve been so happy—” 

3 

That mad little thought flashed off. 

Once more, to get away—to get away was the girl’s 
one urge. She bit her lips; ground her feet into that 
rock. Oh, they must see her from the boat; They must! 
(“Help!”) If she could only scream louder, wave more 
frenziedly— 

In her own ears she heard her angry voice demanding: 
“Where is he ? Why doesn’t he come and stop that 
ship?” 

4 

Mr. Mount at that moment was less than a quarter of 
a mile up the bush-grown hillside. He had left the grove, 
he was just turning away from his favourite winding of 
the brook. Through the gills of four of the finest trout 
(that biggest fellow must be well over a pound) that he 
had yet caught, he had hooked a supple twig. Swinging 
his catch he started for “home.” 

Curious, he did already in his mind think of that creek 
by this word. 

Then he thought: “All very fine and large, but how 
much longer can the state of affairs last? That old liar 
must have set some time limit, dash it all, for his unspeak¬ 
able arrangement. How is his niece going to take it when 
the end does come? Can only be a matter of another day 


LONG DISTANCE CALL 


219 


or so,” Archie Mount told himself (as he had told himself 
daily since the beginning). “The old dodderer will have 
to appear; make a clean breast of it to the girl—” 

And then, what? 

By Jove! she’d be angry! . . . Infuriated she would 
be. True, the little thing had turned up trumps in this 
God-forsaken spot and had actually (from being a mere 
“mess”) proved herself a sportswoman. But the most 
sporting girl in the world would be made angry with 
perpetrators of—there wasn’t a polite word for this 
scheme. 

Margaret Verity on the boat had stormed over being 
taken willy-nilly on a mere sea-trip. What about the 
sequel to it? 

More, what would the girl say to him, Mount? At this 
moment there assailed his ears the sound of the girl’s voice 
calling shrilly some way down the cliff below, calling 
frenziedly: “Help! Help!” 


5 

For that steamer in the bay was making her way— 
perfectly unheeding!—away from the island. 

Ever more vehemently the castaway girl flapped and 
signalled. Useless. Whoever was on the boat had ap¬ 
parently no thought of replying to those frantic signals 
from the shore. 

(If you come to think of it, why on earth should 
they?) 

Fruitless, her efforts. She could wave herself into 
exhaustion: she could shout herself speechless. Smaller, 


220 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


smaller grew the shape of that steamer on the blue; 
longer, longer that plume of smoke thinning out across 
the sky. 

“Too far away,” thought Margaret, anguished. “No¬ 
body on the bridge to keep a lookout. . . . Going. . . . 
Leaving us here. . . . What shall I do!” (Last efforts 
with the flag.) “Ahoy! Help! HELP!” 

“Hullo,” a voice shouted back, sharply concerned, from 
above her. “Hullo, what’s up? What is it, I say? 
What’s the matter, Margaret?” 

Margaret turned to this man crashing through the 
scrub; dropping, as she did so, that pathetic futile frock- 
banner. 

“Ship,” she sighed huskily in a voice with all heart 
gone from it. “Look! Over there to the right . . . 
almost out of sight now.” 

Young Mount for the first time really snapped at her: 
“Is that all?” 

“All?” she repeated, gazing after that speck of black 
upon boundless blue. “She’s gone. . . .” 

“I thought you had been bitten by a snake. I certainly 
thought you had been bitten by a snake at least. For 
Heaven’s sake don’t go giving me another fright like 
that!” 

“Give you a fright? Is that all you say when—” 

“You gave me a most infernal fright. . . . Please don’t 
do it again, if you don’t mind,” with that italicized polite¬ 
ness which is more alarming than any violence. “Hear¬ 
ing you shout out like that, I thought—I believe there are 
scorpions—” 


LONG DISTANCE CALL 


221 


“Can’t you talk about anything but that? Haven’t 
you any imagination? Look! Think! Our only chance! 
Gone from us! . . . Can’t you realize?” 

Mount threw her a look. Not realize? He was within 
an inch of blurting out to her what it was that she did 
not realize. Then and there, as the couple began to make 
their way down, he (dangling trout and scarcely knowing 
what they were) all but began to tell the girl exactly why 
it had been unlikely that any passing boat should feel 
called upon to take the faintest notice of her, waved she 
never so frantically. (What earthly difference could have 
been made, had there waved from the cliffs an entire Ballet 
of Castaway Girls?) 

“I thought that at last the boat had come. ... I 
thought that now we were saved. They never saw me, Mr. 
Mount.” 

“Can’t be helped,” retorted Mount gloomily. 

The temptation had passed. He would not break his 
word, give this show away. He resigned himself to an¬ 
other day, say, of keeping up this farce. After all the 
person with whom he was wroth was not here. Rather a 
shame to visit indignation upon the girl, the whole thing 
being even rougher on her. Consolingly he added: “Don’t 
look so heartbroken, Miss Verity (not aware that just 
before and for the first time he had used her other name) ; 
better luck next time. There’ll be another along, I 
dare say —” 

“You talk as if we were in a London Tube station,” 
protested Margaret unsteadily. “You talk as if a train 
had just ‘passed this station,’ instead of our having just 


222 THE CLOUDED PEARL 

missed the only hope of getting away from a desert 
island!” 

Young Mount, striding down the slope beside her, re¬ 
plied: “Look here, I apologize. It isn’t my fault. Be¬ 
lieve me. Believe me that I am sorry! For everything!” 

Sincerity vibrated in his tone. The last words (which 
Margaret thought applied to the present incident only) 
touched her. She looked up at him with sweet and candid 
eyes of a child, and replied: “Of course, it’s not your 
fault. Why do you say you are sorry? It’s quite all 
right—” 

Impulsively she put out to him the hand nearest to him. 
Shifting those fish into his left, he took the girl’s hand. 
Hand-in-hand they reached the beach. 

At that moment there assailed Margaret a curious won¬ 
der— When had he held her hand before? Suddenly the 
memory swept back. 

Lifting her hand, still clasped in his (he had been help¬ 
ing the girl down from that last boulder: quite natural 
after all, that he should!) she looked up at him, her eyes 
wide. “Ah! it was, then?— It was you?” 

“What was?” 

“It was you” Margaret said, “who held my hand that 
night?” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“You did ... You held my hand that night when 
we were wrecked . . . when we were in the boat coming 
here. Didn’t you, Mr. Mount?” 

Pause. 

Mr. Mount: “Why do you ask me that?” 

“It was you who held it?” 


LONG DISTANCE CALL 


223 


“Yes. . . . But, I say, why did you ask me?” 
Another pause. 


6 

Quite involuntarily Margaret had asked that question. 
Several times she had puzzled over the landing on the 
island. 

Of course there had been the boat. . . . Well, where 
% 

•was the boat? 

Knocked to pieces on the rocks, she assumed. Yes, she 
had assumed (when she had spoken of it at odd times) that 
the boat had been dashed to pieces, reduced to match- 
wood—that all that (apparently) remained of the boat 
was that one plank which, washed up on the shore, Mr. 
Mount had broken in two. and had used when he was 
bobbing her hair. (He was also trying to carve out of it 
some sort of a comb for her.) 

But somebody would have to have rowed that boat— 
You can’t row and hold another person’s hand— 

Also, if there had been only Mr. Mount, in the boat— 
Or had there been somebody else? 

Easy, you think? for Margaret to have asked these 
questions of the young man then and there. . . . 

No. 

It was not easy for her to ask. She was all too 
troubled. Preoccupied. . . . 

At this moment Margaret herself did know what was 
beginning to occupy her. 

Much she cared (basically) about that boat question. 
The boat, the storm, the wreck—those were surface rip- 


22 4 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


pies on the deep. Deep down, she was astoundingly inter¬ 
ested in this question of the touch of another person’s 
hand. (It can be a vital thing enough!) 

Curious, if you go back to the scene when she had 
lolled among her brocade cushions, with her lax fingers 
held, no, left in the hand of young Lord Oddley; left, just 
as negligently as she would have left them in the bowl of 
warm, lemon-scented lotion brought by the black-satin 
expert who asked: “Do you wish the ends cut round or 
pointed, madam?” So many, many times Margaret had 
given up her hand to Claude Oddley: never once had the 
touch even of his lips upon it meant more to her than the 
gesture of her manicurist! Had it been in the dark, she 
would have known no difference in the handclasp of any 
one of her bodyguard. 

Only Mr. Mount’s had been different. His had been 
so—magnetic; comforting—what else could she call it? 
Words failed her. Having once recognized his touch, she 
knew that she would in future always know it again. 
Strange little revelation! It had been pleasant to her; 
quite suddenly she had been made to feel that she liked 
him to hold her hand. 

(This, naturally, was the instant when she took it away 
from him and dropped it, with fingers that opened and 
shut, once, against the rough fold of her skirt.) 

She’d liked it! 

As she could not explain this to herself, how, possibly, 
could she explain it to the man? She could not speak 
about it. She could not frankly answer his: “Why do 
you ask me?” 

Offhandedly she said: “I wondered. I was half asleep 


LONG DISTANCE CALL 


225 


all the time in the boat. I just wondered if I’d dreamt 
it—” Then as if with renewed interest: “What is the 
time ?” 

“Between six and seven. Just seven.” 

7 

From that hour the note of their life changed. That 
rhythmic monotone of well-being broke—into disharmo¬ 
nies. 

The very next morning sounded several of these. 


CHAPTER XI 


CHANGE HERE 

1 

T HAT morning, for the> first time since the sick 
puppy incident, Mr. Mount spoke to Margaret al¬ 
most formally. Not stiffly; no, she could not have 
accused him of that. Still! something had left his man¬ 
ner. Something that had made all the difference had 
now gone out of his voice. It wasn’t only what he 
said. . . . 

What he said was: “I say—should you mind if we finish 
only half these trout for our breakfast to-day, and put 
the others aside for our evening meal? And do you mind 
if we feed rather later to-night? And, if you wouldn’t 
mind, I shall have to ask you to keep to this creek until 
I see you, Miss Verity. I shall have to put you on, as 
it were, on parole, while I am away all day.” 

Surprised, Margaret looked up from cleaning the 
fish (which hideous fatigue she now achieved without 
turning a hair). 

“Away ?” 

“Yes. I really ought to look at the interior of this— 
this place. Do you know, all these days I have hardly been 
more than a couple of miles inland, ever? I might bring 
back—some sort of something,” said Mount, 

226 


CHANGE HERE 


227 


He stood there, looking the typical, the combless, the 
razorless castaway. Their sole toilet implements (till 
he should have finished hacking out that comb) were those 
sticks of eucalyptus, with ends frayed into tassels, which 
they used Boy Scout fashion, as toothbrushes. Clean as 
the sea breeze were these two people. (Cleaner, from the 
freshness of air, sea, exercise, than is the most fastidious 
town-dwelling frequenter of Turkish baths, who spends 
substance on crystals and creams.) But, also, they were 
shaggy as the mountain heath. Mr. Mount’s moustache 
and beard had “come fair” to match his blue eyes, in¬ 
stead of black to match his hair, brows and lashes. Oddly 
compelling, these “two-coloured” men. With that colour¬ 
ing, with his wonderful figure, tousled locks and sandy, 
dishevelled clothes, Mr. Mount looked an Adonis—ac¬ 
cording to Augustus John. Margaret, not even as tidy as 
the Lovely Savage, but bonnier through her ragamuffin at¬ 
tire than she had shown in any of her French frocks, 
looked up at him. As she did so, there flashed back to 
her a tiny scene out of a previous existence. This same 
young man, looking a complete Denis Bradley advertise¬ 
ment for men’s evening dress, perfect in outline, perfectly 
polished, turning upon her a ballroom smile: 

“I am so sorry, Miss Verity, I haven’t had the chance 
to dance with you; and now we have to go.” 

Miss Verity: “Oh, well, that’s your loss, isn’t it?” 
Shades of the Berkeley! Had that ever happened? 

Again the island grew back around her . . . again 
this man’s doings became paramount. He was suggesting 
going away for the entire day! 

Injured she asked: “Aren’t I coming with you?” 


228 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“Who would see to the bonfire?” 

“It has never gone out yet—” 

“It has never been left so long.” 

“Couldn’t we damp it down? It goes on smouldering 
underneath for hours. I remember once at home, in the 
garden, our leaf bonfire was alight for two whole days 
without our doing anything to it, Mr. Mount. We just 
left it—” 

“You probably weren’t dependent upon it, then, for 
all the warmth and cookery you had.” 

“Well! If this fire did go out, we could light it again. 
We’ve got matches? You have a whole box of matches 
left?” 

“Imagine wasting a match. . . . Where do you sup¬ 
pose our next box of matches will come from?” 

“I don’t know,” answered Margaret coldly—indeed, 
v&ry coldly. She found her adopted brother detestable 
this morning. She found him touchy, bad-tempered, even 
quarrelsome. All friendliness had left his tone; he looked 
at her, too, as if he wished to goodness he were the only 
castaway there. 

Around them smiled sands, bay, skies. Further and 
further they seemed to grow apart. With such a sudden¬ 
ness, too; and for no reason that Margaret could see. 
It was as if something had happened since they had said 
“Good night—” 

“The fire,” remarked Mount distantly, “might not be 
too easy to relight. Supposing it came on to rain, with 
our fire dead out? Just because it’s been fine so far— 
You hadn’t thought of—of one of these tropical thunder¬ 
storms that might come on?” 


CHANGE HERE 229 

Swiftly Margaret’s small face altered from sulks to 
panic. 

‘‘You won’t leave me, will you, if there’s going to be 
thunder? Anything else I shan’t mind. . . . Even 
storms at sea I don’t mind as long as it doesn’t thunder 
as well. . . . I’d—I’d much rather have wild animals— 
or savages—” 

“Well, I don’t think you need be afraid of meeting 
either wild animals or savages, here. It’s not the kind of 
place for anything much bigger than a fox; and—er— 
I’ve not struck any footmarks but our own, Miss 
Verity.” 

“I know that. I told you I was not afraid. It was only 
when you said about— You don’t really think it will 
thunder to-day, do you?” 

“Doesn’t look like it,” returned Mount dryly, glancing 
up into the cloudless blue across which gulls drew white 
Vs this way and that. “Marvellous weather. No sign 
of breaking at present, either. You’re not really nervous 
of being left, are you?” 

“I’m not nervous of anything else," explained Mar¬ 
garet. “I like being alone. I prefer it.” 

That taste was gratified during the rest of the blue-and- 
golden day. 


2 

Yet she could not keep her thoughts off her customary 
companion; usually so “pally,” so easy to get on with. 
What a beast he had been this morning! In what a hate¬ 
ful way- he had said “Good-bye” before he swung up the 


230 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


cliff following the course of that giggling, hillside brook 
which was their only larder. 

“Good-bye” indeed! So politely. . . • 

(Beast!) 

As she made ready for her bathe, Margaret remem¬ 
bered how in a previous existence she had once told some¬ 
body that she could not bear Uncle Tom’s “young friend 
Mount.” Horrid manners he had got! 

“So he has,” she told herself, as she dragged the Guern¬ 
sey over her cropped head and flung her tweed skirt from 
her. “Perfectly horrid manners!” 

She found herself considering, thinking over every one 
of them. How charming he could be! How delightful he 
had been! How kind, that first day, when she had been 
so stiff and sore and overtired! How sympathetic! 
Friendly, too, about her childish letters. Always so 
“nice,” even if so reserved. . . . 

For reserved he always was. 

Although he had talked to Margaret by the hour; al¬ 
though—dabbling in the brook or whittling wood or strid¬ 
ing through scrub at her side—he had told her plots of 
whole books he had read; although he had described to 
her entire plays that he had seen; although he had con¬ 
veyed to her life in countries she had never visited—even 
life in his own destroyer during the war—Mr. Mount, 
though brotherly, had still remained inviolably reserved . 
Not a single personal thing about himself had he ever 
told her. No, not once since they had been flung on this 
desert island together. Would he, ever? Margaret won¬ 
dered. 

She went over countless other things about which he 


CHANGE HERE 


231 


had talked to her. She knew every intonation of his 
voice, talking: His “Ah!” His “I say, Miss Verity—” 
His friendly “Don’t be silly!” She recalled the smile in 
his blue eyes. The lights on the top of his black head in 
sunshine. The outline of his profile. His graceful small¬ 
headed, wide-shouldered silhouette moving darkly against 
flames, at night. All these details she had noticed just 
because he was the only person there. Odious of him to 
give her something unpleasant to remember the first time 
that he had left her to herself (“Imagine wasting a 
match.” Bad-tempered brute!) 

Odious of him, too, not to take her with him on this his 
first inland expedition. She was sick of this bit of shore. 
She had been longing to explore whatever lay behind those 
further rocks, that grove, that sweep of desolate country. 

And he—making thin excuses!—had left her. . . . 
Talking about “marvellous weather” as if it were at the 
theatrical garden party. . . . Pah! 

Only after her swim (he had taken her promise never 
to go out of her depth during his absence from the shore), 
only after her swim, rub-down, jerks and sweep-round with 
the broom, did Margaret begin to feel less ruffled. 

Presently, she felt delighted. . . . 

3 

This was when she found what Mount had left behind 
him. Left, forgotten, carelessly left! On the rock close 
to the basin of the cascade— Two priceless treasures. 
One was the matches—the box of matches. 

“How splendid!” exulted Margaret like a schoolgirl. 


232 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“He, of all people! Always ragging me for forgetting 
where I put down the fork! Scolding me for mislaying 
the knife! He can never say a word to me again. My 
turn to rag him for carelessness. . . . Shall I let the 
fire out?” she thought, mischievously. 

“I’ll scatter it a bit, and then I’ll let it out. Then, 
when he thinks he’s lost the matches—” she dropped the 
precious box, as a small boy stows away valuables, inside 
the front of her jersey, which she now wore belted with the 
strap of Mount’s motoring-coat. With zest she gave her¬ 
self up to anticipations of the scene there would be. In 
the briefest space of time she lived through it. In fact, 
she had but moved her head again before she caught sight 
of the second treasure that Mr. Mount had dropped, left, 
forgotten. 

His watch. 

How too good! What possessed him to be so different 
from his usual careful self this morning? 

Margaret took up the watch, an old-fashioned, grace¬ 
ful gold thing that (as he had told her) had been his 
mother’s, with the slender gold chain on which he, too, 
wore it. Chain and watch were always attached to his 
broad belt. Always he kept that watch in a belt pocket, 
the end of the chain fastening into another pocket so 
that it never left him. 

But now! Now, he had left it! 

Margaret felt quite kindly towards him; forgetting his 
manners, his quarrelsomeness, thinking only of how she 
would rag him and how he had deserved it . . . Suddenly 
she noticed what was set in that back of that small watch. 


CHANGE HERE 


233 


A tiny portrait, of course. Naturally, a miniature. That 
of a quite young, dark-eyed girl. Obviously, Margaret, 
looking at it, realized instantly that this must be the 
girl to whom Mr. Mount was engaged. 

Shortly afterwards pain stabbed her. 

This surprised her so much that at first she could not 
place what it was that she had felt. Then, unmistakably, 
she felt it again. Pain. A mental pain that was nearly 
physical. Stab at the heart; lump in the throat. . . . 

She, who had thought—“I can never be unhappy on this 
island.” Unhappiness was now invading her! 

She stood for a moment, frowning. Then she let her¬ 
self down on sun-warmed pebbles and sat, knees drawn up 
to her chin, brooding. A new dull ache of misery filled 
her. 

Much later on she explained to herself that it was be¬ 
cause she was so sorry to think of Mr. Mount separated 
from that girl in the watch. 

“Of course the girl imagines that he is drowned and 
that she will never see him again. Terrible for her. And 
for him, too, of course. That’s what’s made him so bad- 
tempered ; fretting because he doesn’t know how long it 
may be before he sees her again ... if he does see her.” 

Honestly Margaret did not guess the meaning of that 
stab, that lump in the throat, that dull, that gnawing 
ache. At the first hint of that primitive lurker in her 
heart she was saddened, startled. . . . 

An hour later she was restlessly pacing to and fro, 
(barefooted, for her rubber shoes showed signs of wear¬ 
ing through. She kept these for scaling the cliff). Up 


234 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


and down she paced, beside that damped-down fire on the 
beach. With unrecognized defences she damped down 
that other fire which was about to kindle within her. 

“Another ship is sure to come,” she told herself. 

Regret and jealousy smouldered . . . smothered. . . . 
When she put the watch carefully among her own trinkets 
upon the chain in her rock crevice, she thought she would 
give it to Mr. Mount as soon as he missed it; but a mo¬ 
ment later she took the watch up again—drew the match¬ 
box out of its hiding place, and then carefully and os¬ 
tentatiously she put out both these things on the boulder 
where he always sat. She waited for him. . . . 

She thought: “Where can he have gone? What can 
he have found? Where is he?” 

4 

He was at that moment waiting, fuming! Waiting, in 
a tiny village post-office high set above the snow-line of 
that island. Snow-padded the road outside and the edges 
of a brook piercingly crystal, clearer, more sharply pure 
than the cliff-cascade. Snow, dazzlingly blue-white, man¬ 
tled the jigsaw mountains far beyond; near at hand it 
furred the hedges of arbutus, the ferns, the light green 
blossoms of the wild Christmas rose that grew so deter¬ 
minedly all about that savage hamlet, so remote ... so 
cold . . . 

Stifling stuffiness inside the little bureau made Mount 
cough as he waited for the answer to his telephone mes¬ 
sage, to his frantic wires, to his struggles to get through 
in any way to the town. 


CHANGE HERE 


235 


“It lasts!” remarked the Madonna-faced postmistress, 
black-shawled, blue-aproned, behind the lattice. “It 
lasts.” 

Far down on the coast, out of the snow range, in the 
belt of warm sunshine, Margaret, too, waited and waited 
and waited, finding “it lasts”; so that to-day seemed the 
very longest she had ever passed on the island. 

She muttered, huskily: “What can be keeping him?” 


CHAPTER XII 


TWANG AT THE STRINGS 


1 


T sunset Mr. Mount returned—with a surprise. 



It was a hamper, roped about with well-worn 


cord. Bumping, tugging it, pulling it behind him 
by this cord, he brought it up with the remark: “Some¬ 
thing towards the housekeeping, Miss Verity” (uttered 
with enormous brightness). 

Swiftly Margaret thought: “He’s still as cross as two 
sticks.” 

He was. 

“Not without reason, either; since after his hours of 
waiting and to all his frantic appeals he had received only 
the barest, baldest, unsatisfactory reply left by Mr. Lloyd 
at the hotel in that town—the hotel where he had at last 
located that old criminal. The reply had run in two 
languages: “Carry on for the present. Am communicat- 


After which, what was there to do to fling himself upon 
the charity of the village priest and of the village post¬ 
mistress, who also kept the only village shop? 

“You’ve found something. You’ve actually found some 
wreckage!” exclaimed Margaret, thereby relieving Mount 
of the necessity of extra fibbing. During his trail back 
across country he had savagely put together the legend 
of finding the hamper, caught in a cleft of rock in a bay 
to the right. Now he needn’t use it. 


236 


TWANG AT THE STRINGS 


237 


“Do, do let’s see what the things are,” begged Mar¬ 
garet, falling upon the hamper, tearing with her fingers 
at the rigid, complicated knot. . . . 

Margaret and Mount, with an intensity which they 
would not have shown in old days over the whole of Fort- 
num and Mason’s unpacked the tightly-wedged stores. 
They comprised such varying items as a large tin of Petit 
Beurre biscuits, a dozen apples, tongue in a glass, dried 
sausage, boxes of French matches, cigarettes, a flash of 
orange cura 9 ao, more chocolate, a cake of soap (eagerly 
seized by Margaret), a second large knife, and, finally, 
something in an old leather case. 

“Mr. Mount, what is this extraordinary thing?” 

“You may well ask,” retorted Mr. Mount, looking 
foolish. He did not know why he had been such an idiot. 
He had stood out against offers from that benevolent old 
padre of things he really needed, such as scissors and a 
safety razor. With an immense effort of will he had re¬ 
fused these necessities of life, knowing that he must to 
the last moment keep up the desert island racket to the 
girl, helped by every desert island detail. And yet—yet 
he hadn’t been able to stand out against the offer of some¬ 
thing worse than useless. . . . 

Inwardly rating himself, he said: “Why, whoever packed 
up the hamper should have loaded it up with this fool 
thing—” 

“But what is it?” 

“Of all things in the world, it’s a ukulele.” 

“Oh, but how lovely! Can you play it, Mr. Mount?” 

“After a fashion. But—taking up valuable room with 
a fool musical instrument, instead of something useful—” 


238 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


So disproportionately annoyed he seemed, that Mar¬ 
garet did not even introduce the subject of forgotten 
matches and left-about watches. 

She let the young man find them. He put them away 
without a word said. Possibly he imagined that Mar¬ 
garet never saw them. 


2 

For the first time since the wreck there was more than 
fish, mussels, herbs and cascade water for supper. What 
a windfall. . . . The two young people munched biscuits 
between which were wedges of hacked-off tongue, they nib¬ 
bled apples, sweet and juicy. Out of their deepest oyster 
shells they drank hot, heartening orange cura9ao. A 
merry meal it should have been! 

It was the most silent and uncomfortable that they had 
known since their first fish breakfast on the island. 

No longer did there flow between them the current of 
cheerful, chummy sympathy. Mount was fuming, as he 
had not before fumed, over the undiscussable situation. 
He was promising himself that once he had had it out with 
Lloyd, he would never speak to the old felon again as 
long as he lived. He would never see him. (His renewed 
anger against Mr. Lloyd was only aggravated by self- 
reproach. For he, Mount, had lunched off onion soup, 
veal collops, real bread and real coffee, and this “wretched 
kid” here hadn’t tasted food since he had seen her. 
Never see old Lloyd again, nor any one connected with 
him. 

Such were Mount’s meditations during the feast. 


TWANG AT THE STRINGS 


239 


As for Margaret— 

She was possessed by that curious numbness which 
people call “thinking of nothing.” 

Utterly absent, Margaret crouched by the fire in the 
dusk; silent, opposite to that silent young man. Again 
she felt that odd discomfort—not now pain! not now a 
stab! scarcely even a prick. Only as if something pulled 
almost imperceptibly at some string in her heart—rous¬ 
ing her, calling her—to what? 

3 

In the tropical island that she had formerly imagined, 
darkness rushed up to cover face of land and as quickly 
as the stage-curtain falls upon sunlit groups at the end of 
the third act. But not here. There had always been twi¬ 
light. Twilight came now. 

It was fragrant, fresh, of tenderest mauve. In the even¬ 
ing sky Venus blazed white. Other stars shone out to 
greet her. Presently the moon, a huge round creamy- 
pink disc, climbed slowly up from beyond the cliff to the 
right. Moment by moment the night-colouring grew 
richer, palpitating. Redly the bonfire glowed, backing the 
figures of man and girl; fitfully it flickered on the whites 
of their teeth and eyes; it picked out gleam of pearls on 
her neck, glint of gold at his waist. Beyond, all was 
purpling dusk; mysterious, vast. . . . 

Some people might say: “It looked like a scene on the 
stage.” Perish the inaccuracy! For this was the scene 
that they of the stage continually try (and inevitably 
fail) to achieve. 


240 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


When all is said, when have those flat boards created 
any allusion of Mother Earth’s undulating breast? 

What living, laughing light, what dewy dusk, can get 
across the footlights? What breath of the sea across the 
conductor’s desk? What “property” suggests the rustle, 
the rhythmic sigh of nature, to those who know nature? 
When Art has done her uttermost, and reached her high¬ 
est, there remains always that sense of the stage as the 
lighted-up box in which a child’s cardboard puppets are 
jerked on clumsiest wire. 

But here was the Wilderness of Omar—and of all his 
million brothers who have ever yearned— 

“And Thou—” 


4 

“Are you going to sing?” asked Margaret. 

For he had taken out of the case that fool musical in¬ 
strument; blend of the savage and the sophisticated! 

“I only want to find out if the beastly thing is in tune,” 
he said—more shortly than he knew. 

(Long afterwards he asked Margaret: “What do you 
mean by saying I was ‘beastly’? I thought I was being 
so nice to you.”) 

He twanged the ukelele strings. Upon the divinely 
scented air they lifted their half-human snarl. 

“It seems all right,” said Mount, strumming. 

Margaret cleared her throat. “Do sing, won’t you?” 

“Ah! I’ve never really learnt this thing. . . . Just 
picked it up. . . . Will you smoke one of those providen¬ 
tial gaspers?” 


TWANG AT THE STRINGS 


241 


To her own surprise and his, she didn’t want to smoke. 

This evening she felt “all nerves” again; but she did 
not feel that smoking would soothe them. In Hill Street 
she had been a hardened chain-smoker of perfumed ciga¬ 
rettes—a taste acquired in that dense atmosphere. Here 
it had fallen from her, with other acquirements—with her 
drawl, her craving for cocktails, her droop of the mouth, 
her involuntary turn towards the lipstick, with everything 
that was not a native trait of the sound and wholesome 
girl. While the man smoked and strummed she sat on her 
low boulder and fed the flames with bits of twig. 

“Wasn’t he going to talk to her at all this evening?” 

At last in the soft twanging she caught his: “Don’t you 
know any songs, Miss Verity?” 

Margaret shook her bobbed head. “I love listening 
though—” 

In the cottage Jack Verity had often sung; and his lit¬ 
tle girl (following him knee high from shaving mirror of 
his dressing room to carpenter’s bench or potting shed) 
had listened, melted or thrilled. 

“—My father sang so beautifully. Just old-fashioned 
songs that I don’t suppose anybody has heard except my 
mother and me! My favourite was—oh, obsolete of course 
—‘My Old Kentucky Home.’ ” 

“But of course I know that.” 

Softly he strummed. Sensitive fingers that could lure 
the abject fish into their hold, that could imprint them¬ 
selves on nerves of a woman’s hand so that she would not 
forget their touch! With those fingers he plucked its soul 
out of that prelude. Then, into the delicious darky mel¬ 
ody, he lifted up his voice. His was one of those velvet 


242 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


baritones, untrained, unerring, that get the bull’s-eye 
middle of every note, the middle of every melted nerve of 
any listener who has ears to hear. 

“The young folks play on the little cabin floor. 

All happy, all happy and bright. 

By and by hard times come a-knbcking at the door, 

Then my old Kentucky home good night!” 

Tiny silken rustling of waves were his obligato, gentle 
talking of naked fire. . . . 

No words convey beauty of voice; no record can im¬ 
prison it. It passes, swiftly as light that no camera, no 
point can reproduce. It is as the moment’s beauty to 
which we shall not cease to cry: “Ah, stay; thou art so 
fair.” And to which there is no answer but the passing 
of that fairness. 

Very softly young Mount sang: 

“Weep no more, my lady: 

Ah, weep no more to-day, 

We will sing one song 
For our old Kentucky home, 

For our old Kentucky home, far away.” 

Magic of voice and strings upon Island night! . . . 
The rustling of the wave persisted, the talking of the fire, 
the sighing of the breeze in fragrance off the sleeping 
land. . . * 


TWANG AT THE STRINGS 


243 


5 

Briskly his speaking voice broke that magic: “Years 
since I heard that old tune; absolutely. I expect I got it 
all wrong. Quite as good as any of these new ‘Blues,’ 
don’t you think so?” 

Margaret—a dark shape against the glow with just 
one pinky gleam upon her pearls—could not answer at 
once. 

He had twanged strings, not knowing what other string 
had quivered. . . • 


CHAPTER XIII 


NIGHT FREEDOM 

1 


B EFORE saying good night, she told young Mount: 
“You took the first turn of exploring! To-morrow 
I want to go for a tramp.” 

“A tramp—why?” 

“I’m tired of sticking to one little tiny place. I haven’t 
walked enough.” Uneasily Margaret felt that she could 
not, now, appeal to this man as frankly, easily as she 
could have done last night. For no reason something had 
come all different. . . . “I’m longing to get away . Mr. 
Mount. Let me go for a stretch; won’t you?” 
Immediately she was sorry she had said “let.” 

He talked to her like a polite stranger. 

“Miss Verity, you’ve not been very long in training for 
this strenuous life!” 

“I don’t want to be strenuous. I feel perfectly fit for 
a little walk—ten miles—” 

“Not yet. I should have you crumpling up on my 
hands—” 

“I promise you I wouldn’t.” 

“You can’t promise those things,” remarked young 
Mount, putting away his ukulele into its case. His com¬ 
posure hid a certain trepidation. . . . 

244 


NIGHT FREEDOM 


245 


For this indescribable affair was now going to be touch- 
and-go. Short of tying that hamper-rope round the girl’s 
ankles, how was he to keep her within bounds? She had 
now evidently taken it into her head to reconnoitre. Sup¬ 
posing she did? 

It would be one solution of the problem. Possibly the 
best. 

Supposing she did get away, gave him the slip, went off 
for her ten-mile stretch? Ten miles, unless she went 
round and round in a circle, must take her to a road, and 
jolly good made road, too. It would take her to one of 
those stony villages that looked like something out of 
Grimm’s Fairy Tales, one of those churches set so high 
it seemed already half-way to Heaven. It would take 
her to people; peasants riding mules, goatherds. . . . 

That would crash everything. 

Suddenly Mount thought it would be a pity if she did, 
at the eleventh hour, find out. A curious resolution came. 

. . . Angry as he was with old Lloyd, he would back him 
up to the end. He would not allow the girl out of his 
sight. He’d think out excuses. . . . That was his 
plan. 

“Well, Miss Verity, we’ll see what you feel like to-mor¬ 
row. Good night’.” 


2 

Late into the night Margaret lay sleepless, wide-eyed 
in her cave. 

Overexcited, troubled, she twisted from side to side 
under that big overcoat. She asked herself: “What’s the 


246 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


matter with him? Something. Something new since yes¬ 
terday.” Thinking: “Why was I so miserably wretched 
to-night? Why did I nearly burst out crying when he 
sang? I’m homesick. Here I am . . . far away from 
everybody I care for. . . Suddenly, thinking: “I’m 
sure of one thing. He’s keeping something from me. 
He has been keeping something from me ever since we have 
been here.” 

Abruptly, instinct (after the occasional manner of 
instinct) scored its bull’s-eye: “There’s something odd 
about this island and he knows what it is. Supposing 
we were not wrecked at all? Supposing I’ve been kept 
here , on purpose?” 

As usual, the star-turn of instinct met with a poor re¬ 
ception from the audience of common sense. Almost at 
once Margaret was thinking: “That’s absurd! What 
could have put such a lunatic idea into my head ?” 

Again, thinking: “But Mr. Mount is always trying 
to keep me from suspecting—what? Does he know for 
certain that everybody else was drowned? Did he see 
them go down? Can it be that?” 

Wondering: “Is he asleep yet? He did once tell me that 
he had no sooner turned himself about twice and settled 
himself with his face to the sea, than he was asleep and 
knew nothing more.” 

Thinking, anon: “Good! Full moon! Light as day for 
hours. . . . When I feel certain that man is fast asleep, 
I’ll get up. . . . Shan’t wait until to-morrow for any 
ten-mile tramp. I’ll go to-night. ... I can walk and 
walk. Even if I don’t find out anything about the island, 


NIGHT FREEDOM 247 

I can tire myself so that I can sleep like a top when I get 
back—” 

This was her plan. 

3 

Presently, that moon, which in the gloaming had shown 
a golden shield, was set like a silver coin far above the 
rocks. 

“Now,” thought Margaret. 

Pushing aside the coat, she rose, drew on her rubber 
boots. Then, remembering the scrub through which she 
had to make her way, she took off the boots again, to put 
on first the heavy golf-stockings. She also caught up the 
stripped bough that should serve her as alpenstock. 
Equipped, she clambered up, following the brook. Slowly 
at first, cautiously, softly (for fear of waking the sleeper 
in the other cave) ; then, more quickly, she pursued her 
climb. With every step she took there grew upon her the 
delight of adventure, twining with the sensation of night 
freedom. 

4 

Night freedom . . . the curious term is used for a men¬ 
tal state. Some people definitely believe that in sleep the 
soul can disengage itself from the earthbound body. 
Quite seriously, these people declare that they can dis¬ 
tinguish nights when their spirits are thus raised from 
other nights when (captive in the flesh) the soul can gain 


248 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


no freedom; the spirit part of them has not “got away.” 
Those are the nights that tire. However deep the slum¬ 
ber, it has not refreshed. 

Sleep remains the country unexplored. Our nights are 
acknowledged by science to be among the greatest myster¬ 
ies of our days. . . . 

Perhaps Margaret, in her old life of dancing until 
dawn and of sleeping in daylight, had suffered from lack of 
night freedom? On the island her deep sleeps had helped 
her cure. . . . 

But to-night, even awake! the inner Margaret was “lib¬ 
erated” completely as if in dreams—yes, even as she 
moved through a world silvery-strange as are those silver 
dream landscapes. . . . 

Boundless, colourless, the country rose; unrolling it¬ 
self around her. Cliffs, that seemed Mountains of the 
Moon, bordered range after range of distant hills, ivory 
on silver. 

Near boulders seemed ivory; rioting shrubs between 
boulders of silver-filigree. Her own hand before her might 
have been carved of marble. . . . From brown skirt and 
blue jersey colour had gone, and everything showed the 
livid moon-pallor which would be ghastly were it not so 
beautiful. Ah, symphony in silvers! That which gleams 
from slender birch-trunks, flutters on undersides of pop¬ 
lar leaves, spreads, studded with diamonds! on gossamer 
webs—grey of dove-plumage, grey of pussywillow, grey 
of petal-sheath were there to paint the wide strange coun¬ 
tryside. . . . Swift glinting greys as of fish scales, ten¬ 
der grey of thistledown, grey of a woman’s blanching hair, 


NIGHT FREEDOM 


249 


grey of June sky, glowing greys that line the nacre shell, 
grey of a child’s clear gaze, grey wind flaws on the lake 
—all these were there; shifting, interchanging, in a 
scene colourless yet colourful, through which the night- 
free Margaret swung on her way. 

5 

Presently the ground ceased to rise, and her soft-soled 
feet made no noise on the plushy plateau. Twigs flicked 
her skirt. That, and her own soft breathing, were the 
only sounds. She had found it more comfortable to- give 
up wearing the chain of jingling gadgets, now stowed 
away in a pigeonhole of her rock. She wore only her 
pearls, gleaming in the moonlight on her neck. 

On she swung, oblivious of all but solitary delight. . . • 
As tiny stars were drowned in pervading radiance, so 
were any personal thoughts of Margaret’s all swamped 
. . . no image blurred the lovely, goblin scene. That 
string in her heart, twanged by waking emotion, had now 
ceased to vibrate. She did not think of the man whose 
hand had plucked the string. No echo remained of his vel¬ 
vet, heartbreaking baritone. She, who hours ago had 
begun to stir to passion had not at this moment a sigh* 
. . . She did not feel how she was glad to be alone. Si¬ 
lently, rhythmically she swung along. No name, n© 
picture, troubled her. So far from earth was she! So 
removed from the plane of the flesh, with its delights, its 
pangs! Restored to health of mind and body, she was con¬ 
scious of neither. 


250 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


She moved, a spirit in a spirit-world, under the moon’s 
lovely, icy, stare impersonal. 

6 

That bright stare dimmed. Across that silver lake of 
landscape dark flaws seemed to flit. The night was cloud¬ 
ing over. . . . 

Margaret did not become aware of this until something 
more arresting had slid into her consciousness. This was 
the realization that she had seen a ghost . 

It had gone before she “came back” to herself. 

But . . . surely she had seen it? In full moonlight it 
had moved—a foursquare man’s figure with a mat of hair 
that shone as the brightest thing in all that world of 
shifting silver. Why, only a stone’s throw away from her 
it had stood, bathed in unearthly radiance! Then it was 
that the moon had suddenly clouded. When next she 
shone out, the figure was no longer there. While Mar¬ 
garet could have counted six she had seen it distinctly— 
realize that—distinctly as you see your thumb upon this 
page. Then, flick! gone! . . . 

“A ghost?” breathed Margaret vaguely. Still her own 
spirit seemed only just to have struggled back. 

“Of course! I know whose ghost that must have been. 

99 

She was not frightened. Always she had imagined 
that, had some spirit appeared to her of some one familiar 
and dear (say of her young father), she would have been 
startled enough, but not into fear. Now, all alone in this 
eerie landscape, having caught sight of what she took for 


NIGHT FREEDOM 


251 


a spectre, she remained without a trace of that horror 
which would have turned the blood to water of any one 
who has the dread of ghosts. . . . 

That was not Margaret’s dread. 

7 

For, as we have our various loves and what spells ec¬ 
stasy to one brings the profoundest boredom to another, 
we each have our peculiar terrors. 

Some are afraid of the dark. To others the idea of 
small enclosed spaces brings dread as of being buried 
alive. Fear of snakes, so vivid in some people, is well 
known as the story of Eden. Some men who scoff at 
house-terror in women are themselves afraid of nothing 
but moths. Always Margaret’s horror had been of That 
which was now even preparing for her. Even now, as 
from the silver magic she came back to real life, even as 
she thought: “Well, I’m tired—” Even as she began to 
retrace her footsteps, it was gathering. . . . 

8 

It was gathering in the southwest; clouding the moon, 
gradually filling the fresh, sea-flavoured night air with 
heaviness as of the inside of a mine. 

“How close and sultry it’s growing,” thought Mar¬ 
garet ; “almost as if . . 

Involuntarily she lengthened out her stride. 

Then, in all her suspenseful body she felt what was 
coming. 


252 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Quickly it ran over her, like the presage of earthquake 
which (many miles distant) causes New Zealand women to 
drop in sudden fainting fits. She let her alpenstock fall 
to the ground. 

“It is!" she was warned by every tingling nerve. 

Having felt it, she saw. First flash of lightning zig¬ 
zagged like a Corniche Road up the clouds. 

And then she heard it; sound that set her blood running 
cold, her limbs trembling, her eyes and mouth widening 
with horror, her cropped hair creeping up upon her scalp. 
Behind her sounded low, distant growling as of angry 
beasts. 

Her one terror. . . • 

Thunderstorm . . s . 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE TWO TERRORS 

1 

A FTER that moment nothing was clear to her; not 
time, not distance, not how far she ran, not 
whether it was thrice or twice that she tripped, 
falling her length among scrub that scratched her 
skin. . . . 

Behind her growled that menace, giving her wings. 

For ah! how she was terrified ... no hare coursed bj 
greyhounds, no rabbit making its frantic bolt for the 
nearest burrow, na wounded bird stalked by the glaring 
cat has fluttered more wildly as it fled than this young 
girl overtaken by this tempest on the cliff-side at night. 

Terror tore at her every fibre, since with those growing 
fibres the fear itself had grown up. 

It is an old wives’ tale that what has badly frightened 
the mother will impress itself upon the germinating nature 
of the baby whom she has not yet seen. This may of 
course be nonsense. But my friend Violet Verity, months 
before Margaret was born, had been caught in a thunder¬ 
storm, had hastened towards her garden gate as her 
young husband hurried out to meet her, had seen the 
lightning play around his hastening figure, had heard 
the crash of the thunder, followed immediately by that 

other crash of a ruined oak tree that had fallen to the 
253 


254 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


ground only just missing her darling as he ran to catch 
her in his arms. . . . 

This incident may have had absolutely nothing to do 
with the one thing that could cause Violet’s courageous 
child to lose self-control. But always the distant mutter 
of thunder would send that little girl rushing to take 
cover in her mother’s breast, gasping: “Will it be over 
soon? Hold me, Mums! Hold me tight until it’s 
over.” 

And here, where could she take refuge? 

Blindly she headed for the course of the brook; some 
instinct must have guided her towards that dip in the 
cliff that gave the easiest slope down to her beach. 

Ever more threateningly the storm came up from the 
southwest behind her, muttering like a head-down, pur¬ 
suing bull. 

I see that cliff-side as an indigo inferno of rock, scrub 
and boulder, under night clouds that themselves seem 
purple lowering boulders . . . and, flying downwards 
like a long blown leaf that skims the ground, is held up for 
a second, leaps, and skims along; again I see the slight fig¬ 
ure of that girl winged by fear. Blindly scrambling down 
the slope she came, her one thought being to reach her 
cave and there to hide, to flatten herself against the sand 
like some chick over which the dark-winged hawk is pois¬ 
ing, to roll her head up in that coat so that she need not 
hear. Behind her, drawing nearer, faster, more menac¬ 
ingly, the storm gathered over the sea to the northwest. 
Overwhelmingly, oppressively, incredibly close lowered 
those purple-black thunder clouds. They were looped 
down upon her like curtains, they sagged like the canvas 


THE TWO TERRORS 


255 


roof of a tent heavy with rain, smotheringly, terrifyingly, 
they gathered and lowered and sagged and seemed to press 
down ever more tangibly upon her head. Panting, sob¬ 
bing, she was half-way down the slope, when something 
struck her cheek like a bullet. The first drop of thunder- 
rain. Presently another spattered heavily on the bent 
nape of her neck. Then lightning, green as phosphorus, 
ran along that slope to the sea, showing her own feet, 
showing twig and leaf of every plant. Gone in a second 
the picture seemed printed on her eyeballs for seconds 
after it had disappeared into the hot, indigo gloom. . . . 
And then, just above her as it seemed, the first near peal 
of thunder crashed out; crashed, rolled, crashed, rolled. 
... In the pause after that tumult, Margaret, insane 
with terror, caught the end of her own shrill shriek. 

Then she heard Mount’s answering shout. 

2 

Paralyzed as she was, senseless, shuddering! she did not 
know his voice in that man’s heartening call out of the 
dark. 

“Right—!” 

Again the calcium-green flash across the sky! This 
gave an instant’s glimpse of sea, sands, rock and of a 
figure, small-headed, broad-shouldered, slender, cut in- 
black against livid coppery glow of clouds. 

Instantly blackness grew up again. But on the black 
that picture danced for moments, still printed upon the 
sight. . . . 

Even then Margaret did not recognize him. Even then 


256 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


she saw the figure only as help incarnate, only as a human 
being hurrying to her aid. 

“Here,” she sobbed shrilly. “I’m here—” 

Blotting out her words, thunder crashed, roared; but, 
through it! almost beside her! she sensed that heartening 
shout again. Into the dying-down of the sky’s racket 
she caught—“HulZo—■” 

“Yes! I’m here!” she screamed. “ Here —” 

“Righto. I’m close. I’ve got you.” 

Hands closed on her shoulder, on her arm. 

Then she knew it was Mount. Gasping, she turned to 
him. She turned and groped and fell upon him. 

Hot, murky, ringing darkness hid him so that she 
could not have seen that dark graceful Daemon-shape 
against that inferno. Only she sensed the rocklike refuge 
to which she turned, against which she flung herself; clung. 
Poor child, now fast, she clasped herself to the firm shoul¬ 
ders and arms under that moss-rough jersey! Drowning 
ladybird to a branch, blown bindweed to the protecting 
hedge . . . this was Margaret, frenziedly clinging to the 
man whose arms were now wrapped about her. Her eyes 
were hidden against his breast, but even so the lightning, 
flashing, cut its way into her sense of sight. He, too, 
ducked his head at that; closing his eyes upon her hair. 
Around them again that devastating artillery raged and 
roared and seemed to split the heavens. Shattering to 
the steadiest nerves! To Margaret, claimed by it before 
her birth, it was devastation. But, closer in her ear, she, 
trembling like shaken quicksilver, caught his deep-toned: 

“Bit of a storm, this. It’ll be all right. Don’t be 
frightened. It’s only—” The next crash seemed endless. 


THE TWO TERRORS 


257 


... For who, in a storm like that, can tell which is ac¬ 
tually the lightning flash that shows every tiniest pebble, 
and which the searing picture left by the flash upon the 
tortured eye? Who can tell when it is still the bull- 
throated roar of the thunder itself, and when it is the 
loud echoes that racket in one’s ears after the peal has 
passed? 

Into the last of those crushing chords there came: 
“Slap . . . SLAP! . . .” Isolated raindrops spattered 
like flattening bullets upon the near-by boulders. Vio¬ 
lently, with a shriller spatter, one fell against Margaret’s 
wrist. Another, with another sound, dropped upon 
Mount’s brogue. 

She heard him say cheerfully: “Going to pelt with rain, 
presently! Look here, we’d better get under cover while 
we can. Here. To the right. . . . There’s this sort 
of—” Slap! Another huge raindrop got him actually in 
the mouth as he spoke. 

“I see there’s a sort of shelter place under the rocks. 
We’ll see it in the next flash. I shall shove you in if you 
don’t—” 

Just after the next flash he picked her up off her feet. 

3 

Like a puppy being helped into a car Margaret let him 
lift her. Let? Precious little “letting” about it, one 
gathers. Helpless, half-crazed with fright, the poor child 
felt herself carried a few steps downwards, then pushed, 
shoved into some recess ... it seemed almost like the 
bunk of that yacht. She felt herself being gently bumped 


258 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


dawn, as a child bumps its doll, into a half-sitting position. 

“Mind the rock just above your head,” came his voice. 

Rocks seemed to be at her back and above her; the 
ground was sandy—or dusty? Only long afterwards Mar¬ 
garet realized the place it was. A sort of arch formed 
by two boulders, flanking an overhanging brow of rock—a 
huge, naturally formed cromlech backed by the cliff-side. 
Below, the cliff sloped irregularly down. The slap of 
raindrops sounded faster now upon the face of it, but she 
was well under shelter. 

Only—was that warmly comforting refuge of human 
arms going to be drawn from her? In the next flash she 
seemed to see him moving backwards; while almost simul¬ 
taneously the sky above their shelter split to another of 
those deafening crashes . . . peal after peal, it seemed 
as if it must shatter the whole cliff to pieces, must bring 
every boulder down, like a child’s house of bricks. Was he 
leaving her to this? So tightly she clutched him, the 
rough jersey was dragged down about his neck until it 
seemed, he thought, a cord to throttle him. 

He felt the movement of her lips rather than heard the 
words they tried to frame. 

“You won’t leave me— Please—” 

“Of course, I’m not going to leave you, child! I’m 
coming in here to sit by you, if I may? . . . An awful 
squash, I’m afraid. ... I won’t leave you.” Here a 
fresh explosion followed another of those lurid search¬ 
lights. 

Gently Mount had disengaged Margaret’s hands from 
dragging at his jersey’s collar. At the fresh tumult the 
girl clutched him again, hiding her face against his throat, 


THE TWO TERRORS 


259 


clipped him, in the tightest belt that he had ever known, 
around his waist. It was then (he thinks) that some thing 
in his waistbelt went “crack!” but only hours afterwards 
did he find that the glass of the miniature on the watch he 
wore in his belt-pocket had been shivered and starred 
across. Only later he found that. For now he had this 
frantic child in his arms to keep from going mad with 
terror in the increasing storm. 

“All right, all right. It can’t touch you, my dear. 
Bury your head. Yes. Don’t listen. It can’t touch us 
in here. This is a wonderful pitch; great luck we were 
near it —” 

He edged closer into that rock crevice, easing the strain 
of her arms. He sat huddled up against her. He threw 
his left arm to wreath her shoulders; his right hand 
clasped, firmly, her upper arm. His long legs, stretched 
out just under cover, made the lintel to their cell. 

“It can’t go on forever. Nothing can. Ah, here’s the 
rain in earnest now. By Jove—” 

4s 

Violently the rain lashed down. Hissing, it flung its 
sheets upon the bay; flatly slapping, it took the rocks 
and boulders. Rustling, pattering, it poured into the 
scrub; close to their refuge some large—fleshy-leafed 
plant—a cactus perhaps?—took the drops to the sound as 
of a rolling drum. . . . All those sounds resolved them¬ 
selves into a noisy, angry-sounding symphony of rain. 
The next flash of lightning showed it like a heavy cur¬ 
tain of strung silver beads between themselves and the 


260 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


dark. The bay indeed seemed changed into a flat-bot¬ 
tomed amphitheatre of white mist, where the rain, striking 
the smooth sea-water, spattered up again in millions upon 
millions of tiny, broken fountains. And presently there 
broke out into that chorus of rain-noises the voice of their 
swollen stream. 

I, who was not there, have to make my own version of 
the scene—which may or may not be correct. Sights, 
sounds and feeling of that night have to be pieced to¬ 
gether. ... As sight I get . . . well, nothing much. 
In the intervals between the flashes everything must have 
shown as masses of inky purple—stationary indigo masses 
(which were rock), slowly, heavily writhing, drooping, 
grape-purple masses (which were thunderclouds). Only 
every now and again the livid emerald across the horizon 
showed pallid misty sea, jagged headland, showed, too, 
most definitely every shadow and shape of that rock 
cranny, in which was set, as in an alcove, that living-statu¬ 
ary group: terrified, shuddering maid, young man in 
whose arms she had taken refuge (much she knew or cared 
if it were a man young or old, or a woman—her mother 
or me or whomsoever). 

As sound? . . . There was that artillery of the storm 
—“a thousand coal-carts tipping over into the chute at 
once,” is my homelier image; there was the growing 
crescendo of the brook and cascade, there was the steady 
many-voiced lashing-down of the thunder-rain. Now and 
again it seemed as if the thunder were abating . . . then 
that clasp would relax a little about his belt. But again 
the storm symphony would take an encore. . . . Again 
the clasp would tighten. The small face would bury it- 


THE TWO TERRORS 


261 


self more desperately against his shoulder, against the side 
of his neck or whatever came nearest to her. . . . Against 
his breast he would feel her heart beating more wildly 
again. And so through an hour or more. . . . 

5 

» 

At last against his ear he felt her lips moving again, 
he heard a tremulous mutter. 

“Frightfully sorry. . . . Frightfully ashamed of my¬ 
self. . . . Can’t—can’t help it somehow.” 

“Ah, Margaret, I know you can’t 1” he broke in heart- 
eningly, with a heartening pressure of his fingers that 
circled her trembling arm. “I know you can’t; but what 
does it matter? Why, plenty of people are that way— 
lots of people! Always in a blue funk whenever there’s 
any thunder about! It’s not only—” 

“D’you know,” she muttered quiveringly, “just before 
you came up ... I thought I was going to die. . . . 
Shouldn’t have minded that nearly as much, because then 
I couldn’t have heard . . . oh!” with a shudder that 
shook her slender body from head to foot; and shook him 
too. “There it is again. I thought it was over. . . . 
Don’t let me go. . . . I’m sorry, but please .” 

“I won’t let you go, honour bright. ... I wish to 
God I’d a nip of brandy for you.” 

“Wouldn’t do any good. Only please . . . promise 
you’ll hold me tight until it’s over.” 

“All right, all right, dear!. I can’t hold you any tighter 
than I am. It’s just that infernal noise . . . Lord! 
That sounded like a land mine going up. Nothing hap- 


262 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


pens, you know. ... Of course it seems so much worse 
because we’ve had such calm weather the whole time we’ve 
been here. Like tepid milk. . . . Then this! Force of 
contrast. . . . Like somebody who is usually amiable 
suddenly bursting out into a blazing temper. . . . Much 
more alarming, isn’t it? than a blazing temper from some 
one who is accustomed to having ups and downs. . . . 
Never mind. This can’t go on. . . . Don’t look at the 
flashes! . . . That’s the last lap, perhaps.” 

But it was not yet the last lap. Still the storm raged. 
Still the time went by. 

It went by; and they, who felt and heard every stir of 
one another, saw one another only in flashes as dark 
shapes, a lighter hand, a livid face, a gleam of eyes or 
pearls. Faltering, her voice came from against his breast. 

“You must think me the worst coward you ever met.” 

“Ah, don’t be silly. It’s only about this. I call you 
plucky. You’ve been plucky enough about all the other 
things. You have! I’ve seen you, Margaret.” 

“Anybody else would think I was a most ghastly cow¬ 
ard. . . . Tried to remember I was a sailor’s daughter. 
. . . But anybody would think—” 

“They needn’t, I’m sure,” retorted young Mount. “I 
don’t suppose there’s a soul alive in the world who isn’t 
afraid of something.” 

“Do you think that . . . Do you really think so, Mr. 
Mount ?” 

“Rather.” 

“But even,” she persisted tremulously, “people who are 
supposed to have to be brave? A sailor’s daughter, 
even?” 


THE TWO TERRORS 


263 


“Why not? Or a sailor for that matter,” retorted en¬ 
couragingly the voice of that dark shape out of the dark¬ 
ness. “They often say of some hero or other: ‘He never 
knew what fear was.’ That’s rot. He may have got the 
upper hand of it, but if he’s mortal man he’s known what 
fear was, you bet.” 

A queer conversation, if you remember that it all went 
on while this couple of the modern young remained locked 
in each other’s arms; making a group that might have 
represented the Loves of the Cave Dwellers. 

Yes, for by fear they had been flung into the group 
which from time immemorial has been composed by love. 
But of this they had then no consciousness. Huddled to¬ 
gether for warmth and comfort, she, clasped -to his breast! 
he, wreathing her with his arms! still remained without 
consciousness of love, passion, or sex forces strong as any 
that split the night clouds and lashed the seas outside that 
sheltering recess where Mount and Margaret clasped and 
talked. Strange, strange must have been the contrast 
between the impersonal tone of the two young voices and 
the attitude of the two young figures! Detachedly they 
answered one the other, talking out of an embrace that 
could scarcely have been closer had these two become al¬ 
ready the most ardent lovers. 

To speak at all, Margaret had to lift her young mouth 
from the side of his neck against which it had been pressed 
as if in the warmest caress. 

But all she had to say was: “You think it’s really true 
that everybody has been afraid of something?” 

Wistful, plaintive, it must have sounded in the night— 
the voice turning childish with terror as she gasped: “Ah!” 


264 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“That. What was that, Mr. Mount? Thunder com¬ 
ing over again? Please, please go on talking to help me 
not to listen. Tell me. What about you?” 

She did not remember, of course, that only to-day she 
had realized that never, never had this reserved young 
man broken through the reserve, to tell her anything about 
himself. She had wondered if he ever would. . . . 

Now the time was at hand. 

When she quavered: “I don’t suppose you have ever 
been afraid of anything?” He answered her, amazingly 
without reserve. 

“I? Not afraid of anything? You’re wrong there, 
Miss Verity,” returned the encouragingly matter-of-fact 
tone of the man whose chin was resting on her hair, whose 
fingers were warm with the warmth of her own rounding 
shoulder, and into whose breast there had stolen unnoticed 
the light, smooth, sliding touch of the pearl string clasped 
about the girl’s own neck. You’re wrong, Miss Verity, 
because, as a matter of fact, I’ve always been deadly afraid 
of one thing.” 

“You? But you’ve got the D.S.O., and you were in a 
destroyer and blown up three times and everybody seemed 
to think you were wonderful in the war and all that kind of 
thing. I’ve heard about it—” 

“I know. That is the kind of thing one hears about. 
I don’t mean that, you know,” retorted young Mount. 
As he moved slightly she felt as well as heard his little 
laugh. “There was that, of course. One always knew 
one might be for it at any moment. But those outward 
things, getting killed, getting blown up or sunk—you 


THE TWO TERRORS 


265 


know, there was something that always made me feel much 
worse afraid than that.” 

“What?” 

“You won’t laugh if I tell you?” 

“How could I, possibly?” 

“Ah, I know you won’t. Well, then, to tell you the 
truth,” he said very simply, “I’ve always been afraid of 
love.” 


6 

“Afraid of love?” 

Arrested, the girl in his arms forgot her suspenseful 
agony lest the storm should not be over. 

“But why are you afraid of love? I didn’t know any¬ 
body was—” 

“I don’t know if anybody else is, I only know I am.” 

“But how—afraid of it?” 

“Badly afraid.” 

“But what do you mean exactly? Why should you be 
afraid of love?” 

“Several reasons . . . yes, several. . . . For one 
thing, it hurts,” said Mr. Mount, the usually bafflingly, 
completely reserved. His voice dropped a tone; she felt 
that. “Damnably it hurts. When you’re made so that 
you care—care so crazily for people. Well, it’s a curse. 
Just a curse upon you. You understand that?” 

A pause, broken only by the steady, many-noted thrash 
of rain (crystal-strung portiere to their shelter), by the 


266 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


rhythmic drum, drum, drum of drops upon that fleshy 
plant just outside. 

Margaret’s voice, interested, steadier than it had been, 
replied: 

“I don’t think I do understand. Tell me about it.” 

“Do you know that I’ve never told anybody? Never 
breathed a word of it to any living soul?” 

“Oh! I ought not to have asked—” 

“Ah. Don’t be silly. I’m going to tell you . I don’t 
suppose I could, you know, if I was able to see you. But 
. . . this is different. Well, to begin with, I was fright¬ 
fully fond, of course, of my mother. She died, you know” 
(quickly he slurred over the words). “It was rather 
ghastly, that. That was when I was a tiny little chap. 
Then later on—after I went to school— At school, you 
know, one sometimes makes wonderful friends. Wonder¬ 
ful friends; they can mean the devil of a lot. Having 
everything in common with them. . . . Thinking no end 
of them. . . . There are some fellows—well! do you 
know, just having known them and how wonderful they 
were, seems to alter the whole course of your life. Hero 
worship! . . . I don’t know if girls have it in that way. 
I don’t believe they do, Miss Verity.” 

“I never was at school,” replied Miss Verity, moving her 
cheek against his throat as she put up a hand to her 
pearls. It was then that she’d found that her string, 
fastened about her neck as it was, had (while she clung to 
Mount) dropped inside the breast of his thick jersey; 
here it had caught on a loosened stitch of wool. It made 
a looping, coiling link of smooth, milk-warm pearls be¬ 
tween him and her. Drawing them free, she pulled them 


THE TWO TERRORS 


267 


out of the way as a girl, dancing, does with a necklace 
that irks her; she pulled them aside, scarcely realizing that 
she had done so, for she was absorbed only in what they 
were discussing. “My mother taught me until I was 
twelve, you know. Then I had all sorts of masters and 
French governesses and things to come to the hotels, 
wherever we were, to give me any lessons that amused 
me, all by myself. That’s not school life, of course. So 
I never had any school friend. Nor any very great 
friend—” 

Noticeable, perhaps, that she neither mentioned nor 
thought of the name of Cynthia Oddley, once such an in¬ 
fluence in her life. Silent, she listened for what should 
come next from the man’s mouth three inches from her 
own. 

“Girls,” it said musingly, “are supposed to be more 
romantic than we are. I don’t believe that. I think girls 
are much more practical. Much less dreamy; less imagi¬ 
native, less sympathetic. More prosaic in a way, girls. 
Of course, I’ve hardly known any girls really,” he added 
ingenuously. “But what was I beginning to say?” 

“Friends at school that you cared for—” 

“Ah, yes. Well, of course presently they went. Right 
out of one’s life they went. One never saw them again. 
All divided and scattered. One suffered like blazes. . . . 
I hope I’m not boring you,” he broke off here with the 
oddest little relapse into a previous, a London existence. 

“Go on, go on; and then I shan’t be afraid of listen¬ 
ing for—the other.” 

“Right you are, then. Well; can you see what I went 
through? No. . . . But—honestly, my dear, it was hell. 


268 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


v . . People would laugh. Whenever one cared for any¬ 
thing it got to mean too much . . . ah, madness, to let 
oneself! Then they went. Then, the last thing.” He 
cleared his throat. “Poor old Charles!” 

“Your brother,” murmured Margaret. “I can 
imagine.” 

“It was rather the comble,” he said. “It was after 
that, I think, that I pulled myself up. I made up my 
mind: ‘Dashed if I ever let myself get tied up again in any 
sort of strong feeling that gets one . . . mauled.’ You 
see, I’m afraid of it. I feel like you do about the storm. 
Cowardice, I know. Mine, I mean.” 

He spoke in a voice she had never heard before, of 
things which she would never have looked for in either 
of the Archie Mounts she knew; for this was not the 
conventionally charming, the London-tailored-dinner- 
guest aspect of him; neither was this the efficient cast¬ 
away who built bonfires, fished, brought down ilex boughs, 
dragged hampers over rocks. This was a Mr. Mount 
she certainly hadn’t met. Indeed, one does not know 
if anybody else had. Was he finding himself? Liberated 
by darkness and storm and the utter strangeness of the 
whole situation, for once the essential Archie found him¬ 
self (night-free after a fashion!) discussing with this girl 
in his arms a subject which only in the recesses of his 
mind would he ever have talked to himself. 

“Simple cowardice. Love, that’s my ruling fear.” 

“I understand,” said the girl whose fear was storm. 
And she spoke a little tremulously, for a belated flash of 
lightning had flooded the very interior of their dry and 
sheltered nook. She had seen every surface modelling of 


THE TWO TERRORS 


269 


its rocky walls; she had seen, actually, a spider in its web 
across one corner, a big many-legged spider. 

Quickly she thought: “Spider at night brings luck.” 

Then, through thrash of rain, sounded the growling 
farewell of that storm. Involuntarily there tightened 
upon his waist the hands of the girl afraid of thunder. 

“I can’t help it any more than you can,” confessed the 
young man afraid of love. “I realized: ‘Well, if I’m made 
so that I feel like this about relations and pals, good 
Lord! where should I land myself if I let myself go over a 
woman?’ I could imagine it. Yes, I could imagine my¬ 
self. It’s putting all one’s eggs into one basket. Hand¬ 
ing oneself over and not belonging to oneself any more. 
One can’t—one couldn’t take one’s mind off it. One’s soul 
—literally—not one’s own. It would be possessed by an¬ 
other human being.” 

“People say that’s so wonderful.” 

“It might be. Tant pis. One would live thinking one 
might lose her; one would lose her. Or it might be any¬ 
thing but wonderful. . . . Some one who turned one 
down. . . . Some one— Supposing it all meant nothing 
to her? There one would be, Margaret. At the mercy 
of the thing. All cut open and raw to it, like I’ve seen 
fellows. Fit for nothing any more—just at its mercy— 
chucked about—” 

“Would you be?” 

“But I know I should. I should be hopeless. I could 
imagine myself. My dear! It was like standing on one 
of those crazy little mountain bridges, and staring down 
too far into some ramping, raving, torrent beneath—” 

Imagine, in that night of alternate murk and of flicker- 


270 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


ing flash, the thunder blending with the sound, close in the 
girl’s ear, of this confession of a young man. His breath 
was caught in between his teeth now before he went on. 
Margaret recognized that note of shrinking dread with 
which he spoke. 

“Supposing I were to let myself drop down there!— 
let myself be carried away by falling in love? Supposing 
I were to let myself go! No. I’ve always known I must 
not let that happen.” 

“That was before you got engaged to be married?” 

“Years before. Years.” 

“But since then you’ve become engaged.” 

“Ah, yes,” he returned in quite another voice. “That 
was why, largely.” 

“How can you mean ‘that was why’?” 

“Of course, because an engagement—that’s so different, 
isn’t it?” 

“Is it, do you think?” 

“But of course it is! That’s an utterly different thing, 
don’t you see. Another matter altogether. A man has 
to marry, after all, sometime. Besides, that keeps things 
placid and settled and safe.” 

“Oh!” commented Margaret. 

She did not at that juncture know whether she agreed 
or disagreed, whether she thought it strange or found it 
perfectly natural that a man should be afraid of love, 
should for that reason become engaged to a girl and 
should look forward to marriage as the means of keeping 
life placid. 

At the time it probably seemed natural enough, or at all 


THE TWO TERRORS 271 

events not much more unnatural than anything else in 
nature. 


7 

She added: “But the girl?” 

Here you must realize something that may seem a little 
incredible. 

Absolutely no memory had Margaret at the moment of 
that pain which had stabbed her at sight of a girl’s por¬ 
trait set in his watch. For the moment she forgot that 
brooding, that ache which had lasted until she saw him 
again. . . . Oh, yes, that had been the stirring of jeal¬ 
ousy right enough! For the moment, however, that mani¬ 
festation of waking passion had ceased to stir. So vari¬ 
ous are the moods of a maid with a man. So funda¬ 
mentally was her mood now, from when she had thrilled to 
his singing in the firelit gloaming. Fear of storm, pos¬ 
sessing her, had blotted out physical attraction to the 
mate. . . . He had assumed the protector; he had re¬ 
sumed the chum. Forgotten was dawning trouble, for¬ 
gotten the awkwardness and gene that it had caused. 
Margaret, with a heart full of trust, childlike gratitude 
and confidence, was deeply interested in all that her friend 
had told her to-night. 

It was as a genuine afterthought that she added, now: 

“But the girl?” 

“Enid, you mean?” 

“Is that her name? That is your fiancee in the minia¬ 
ture you have set in your watch?” 


272 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“Yes, that’s Enid. She commissioned some artist friend 
of hers to do it for me—rather a good likeness.” 

“Well, what does your fiancee feel about things like 
that, Mr. Mount? What does she say?” 

“Say? She doesn’t say anything particular.” He 
spoke almost as if she were on the island with them! 

“She must talk to you?” 

“Why?” He laughed a little; Margaret felt the stir 
of it. He added: “Please don’t imagine we don’t get on 
together. We get on very well, Enid and I; she’s a won¬ 
derful dancer. I first met her at a dance. Well, we just 
dance and—what else does one do? Play tennis—she’s 
remarkably good. Get asked to stay at country houses 
together. Play golf together. Ride. Nobody wants to 
talk the whole time.” 

“I know. I mean, I can imagine people not talking the 
whole time even if they are engaged. But what I mean 
is—she must wonder—she must think about whether you 
are—what does she think, Mr. Mount?” 

Curiously detached, he replied: “What do girls think? 
Modern girls with plenty of interests, plenty of things 
to give them a good time. What are most women like 
about marriage and all that? Cutting out the ready¬ 
made cliches? . . . When they haven’t got to be impress¬ 
ing the man, or their friends, or anybody? ... At the 
bottom of their hearts ? When they were being absolutely 
sincere? Personally, I don’t believe they think of love at 
all.” 

“Not think?” repeated Margaret, indescribably inter¬ 
ested. 

“Not girls.” 


THE TWO TERRORS 


273 


"What?” she exclaimed. 

Simply and directly as a brother, more interested than 
the average brother, he said: “Well, you are a girl; what 
about yourself? Do you find yourself thinking so much 
about it?” 

“But I have never been engaged.” 

“That—” He made a little sound, half-contemptuous. 
“Is that the criterion?” 

“I suppose not. But I’ve never cared for anybody,” 
said she, who had so queened it over her bodyguard. 
“Only—” 

“Only what?” 

Margaret was silent. 

She knew now that deep down under strata and silt of 
Hill Street life, she had always cherished a hidden convic¬ 
tion that love, which must come, should come wonderfully. 
. . . How explain this to this young man? 

It was he who continued: 

“You thought being in love and all that was the main¬ 
spring of existence? For women?” 

“No—” 

“Yes; own up! Yes, I believe you did. I’m sure your 
mother thinks so. Well, so it is, in a way. But not what 
I’ve been talking about. What most girls want nowadays, 
I imagine, is not the man—not love at all.” 

“Well, what then?” 

“Ah, what they can get out of life through the men! 
For a clever, ambitious girl, opportunities. Opportuni¬ 
ties to make a wonderful hostess, to meet interesting 
people; to travel, perhaps. To be ‘somebody.’ For the 
average girl—oh! the general buzz and excitement of get- 


274 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


ting engaged, and what sort of a ring, and writing to 
acknowledge congratulations, and being photographed for 
the Bystander , and settling about the wedding, and ‘Oh, I 
must take you to call upon such and such friends of 
mine,’ and writing out endless lists of guests, and inter¬ 
viewing agents, and going to look over a town house. 
They take the main fact as a matter of course; engaged 
girls. They assume that’s all there is to it, and that the 
rest is— Oh, chat out of books,” concluded young 
Mount. 

He had never been so near to the Enid who was his 
promised wife as he now was to this other girl whose 
lissome body he held clasped in that embrace that only 
seemed this girl whose face he could not see since it was 
doubly hidden by the smothering night and by being 
pressed into his shoulder. Never in his twenty-nine years 
of life had he talked so frankly, so easily, so intimately 
to any girl. To think that she would be a stranger to 
him but for the unbargained circumstances of these last 
weeks 1 But it was only hours—these hours of sheltering 
from the midnight storm that had drawn them (mentally 
as well as literally) near. 

Years of Hill Street, London, civilization would have 
left him uttering the usual banalities to her about the 
floor, the new show, the boat race; would have left her, not 
too politely, half-listening to him. 

But now, musingly, the confidante in his arms on his 
breast remarked: “I remember saying to somebody or 
other that I wondered if love were as amusing as it was 
made out to be.” 

Quickly Mount asked: “What did he say?” 


THE TWO TERRORS 


275 


. . I’m afraid I forget.” 

Indeed, she could not at that moment remember whether 
she had said it to Claude Oddley, or to that red-haired 
boy called Eric. Probably to both. ... It was too many 
ages ago. . . . And, after all, they had been such babies, 
these boys! how could she remember what they had an¬ 
swered ? 

The deep voice of Mount came out of the darkness. 

“So you wondered if love were amusing, did you? Ah! 
Don’t try to find out,” he advised her. “Steer clear of 
the dashed thing! Romance? More amusing things— 
better things—in life than that after all. After all, too, 
lots of this rave about love must be pure fake.” 

“Ah, now you’re taking that view?” 

“Obviously the most sensible one.” 

“What, that there’s nothing else in it? 4 Maya: illtb- 
sion’f But,” objected the girl clingingly, “if there were 
not something else, you would not be afraid of it.” 

“Good Lord! my dear child, I never said there wasn’t 
anything else. Only, as I tell you, I’ve made up my 
mind never to go near it,” explained Archie Mount, with 
his arms still and always wrapped perforce about her. 
“Personally, I don’t give it a chance! I wouldn’t either, 
if I were you,” he warned her. “Don’t, if you’re wise—” 

Then, abruptly, was silent. 

In that pause Margaret should have felt something; 
some stir of electricity that was not of the storm outside; 
suddenly grown tension in the atmosphere, not due to the 
sultriness of the cave where they sat in each other’s arms? 
But in the mood that she was in she did not respond to 
that message of the atmosphere. She missed it. 


276 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


She only remembered (now that they had stopped con¬ 
sidering love) that she had a thousand questions to put 
to her companion on quite another subject. She had 
meant, as soon as there was time, to begin with the ques¬ 
tion: “Mr. Mount, what is it that you’re keeping from 
me about this island that we are on?” But here they had 
been talking as if no such island existed. Extraordinary. 
As if they had been partners waiting in the interval at a 
dance ... or even as if they had been college chums 
sitting up, talking late in rooms together. . . . 

Now, however, she would ask him. 

Immediately, however, the question was washed out of 
her mind by another. 

Anxiously she exclaimed: “Mr. Mount! Why is your 
heart thumping like that? Are you ill?” 

“Ill?” he repeated, very angrily. “No. Ill? Of course 
not! It isn’t my heart that’s thumping,” he muttered, 
as he moved. 

Fiercely enough it was hammering, his heart, against 
the girl’s own as she lay there in the arms that were 
within a second of tightening, vehemently, upon her; 
within a second of turning that brotherly, protective, pas¬ 
sionless clasp into a real embrace. He was all but losing 
his head. So suddenly, so unexpectedly, impulse had 
fallen upon him. 

For years, remember, this young modern had seen him¬ 
self as a man who, while acknowledging its power, had suc¬ 
ceeded in cutting human passion out of his life. (This 
is done about as easily as garden elder may be rooted out 
from borders in which it has once seeded.) He then 
turned his back upon the thing. 


THE TWO TERRORS 


277 


Here, it springs up to face him! 

Not without warning. The first had come when he 
heard Margaret’s voice below him on the cliff crying for 
help. The anxiety that had stabbed him then might have 
answered any woman’s appeal; not only that of the com¬ 
panion whom he had seen dropping one by one the blem¬ 
ishes of overcivilization, the girl whom he had seen lit¬ 
erally blooming and rounding out under her coarse attire 
as she responded to age-old medicine magics of sunshine, 
air, simplicity, exercise, sleep. By degrees, the obscuring 
cloud that had dimmed Margaret’s native health, beauty, 
sweetness, had passed. Day by day there had gleamed 
out the milky pure, alluring radiance of the veritable pearl. 
This he had seen; not yet had he felt with his heart. Not 
consciously. . . . 

But that second warning! that thrill which had raced 
hotly through him at the clasp of her own warm young 
hand and she had asked him: “Did you hold my hand in 
the boat?” That had been enough to unsettle him, keep 
him ill at ease and on his guard, drive him from her side 
for an endless day. 

And then that storm! His instant instinct to go in 
search of her, his hideous moment when he found her cave 
empty, his heaven of relief when, in the tempest-sultry 
dark, he heard her voice again. Then those hours, locked 
together closely as a couple in “Les Noyades,” in that 
cave. 

No danger there—to begin with. 

For again the lovely, burgeoning girl, that emerging 
disturber whose voice might stab and whose touch might 
at any moment thrill, had been hidden and sheathed away 


V 


278 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


from him; she’d relapsed into the helpless child, the lost 
kitten, the waif dependent upon him. Deathly terrified she 
had been, with a terror that he had had, perforce, to 
soothe against his breast, and which he had only silenced 
by matching against it his own secret fear. . . . 

Good Lord! how he had babbled. . . . 

But it had been all right. He had talked to her as to 
a human being, not thinking of her as either girl or man. 
Just a human being in distress. Sex left completely out 
of it. Completely. 

Until— 

Ah! Until in one moment, swift and revealing as the 
lightning’s lurid flash, passion . . . ! Flaming, it had 
sprung up in him. Through all his trusted defences of 
resolution, reason, habit, that pagan mood had in one 
moment crashed. In that one pulsing moment it had 
caught Archie Mount, that reserved and balanced mod¬ 
ern, by the throat, shaken him to the core. Even the 
girl herself, all ignorant, exclaimed in sudden innocent 
surprise: “Why is your heart thumping like that?” 

8 

“It isn’t my heart that’s thumping at all. I’m getting 
a bit cramped though, as a matter of fact. Just a bit of 
cramp in my left leg.” 

“I’m so sorry.” 

Margaret drew a little aside towards the rocky wall of 
their shelter so as to make what room she could for him 
in that narrow space. But how absurd to say that his 


THE TWO TERRORS 


279 


heart hadn’t been thumping! Why, it had suddenly 
pounded as fast as hers during the worst of the thunder. 
... It had pulsed as strongly as the engines on that 
yacht. And why 'pretend that it hadn’t? Sitting as they 
were, enlaced—the pattern of his rough jersey printed 
off against her cheek and the lines of webbing from his 
belt stamped off, as she could feel, against her palms, 
how could she possibly help feeling also that the man’s 
heart had pulsed quite differently for a few moments 
against her own breast? 

“I suppose that was the storm?” she said anxiously. 
“The electricity. ... It always makes my own heart 
go—” 

“It’s going. I mean the storm is going over,” returned 
Mount, quickly. “Listen, Miss Verity.” 

A short pause. 

Outside, framed by that square of rocks, the rain 
thrashed down, but more moderately now. For some time 
now there had been no flash, no echoing peal. The storm 
had spent its rage. The strain was lifting, lifting with 
every minute, that oppressive tension in the dark was 
lessening now. A freshness was coming into the air. It 
was over. 

Mount could tell that by the instinctive relaxing which 
rippled down every muscle of the lithe form he still held, 
but less closely. He repeated: “Over!” And drew a long 
breath. “To-morrow will be gloriously bright again. It 
will be just like yesterday.” 

“—like yesterday,” agreed the girl in a voice that 
trailed. 


280 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


9 

Half-asleep already, he realized. 

Poor child! . . . Only a child, after all. . . . Tired 
out! 

She had been done in first by her tramp along the cliff— 
how lucky that when the thunder had threatened he had 
felt that she might be frightened, had turned at once to 
her cave, and, missing her, had climbed immediately in 
search of her! 

Done in she was, first by fatigue. Next by the fear 
and strain of these last hours. 

Poor child, poor child! 

Enormous pity invaded the man, ruling out every other 
feeling. The girl was just dropping off. From about his 
waist her hands came unclasped. One of them fell, lax, 
against his knee. 

He did not move. 

More regular grew her breathing. More steadily, more 
quietly her heart beat under her rough jersey and softly 
rounding breast. 

He did not move or suggest that they should make 
their way down to the beach. What was the use of her 
getting wet through on the way to that cave of hers ? She 
was dry, warm, better where she was. 

He felt her draw a longer breath. Then her drowsy 
voice said absently: “I can’t think what reminded me— 
do you know what I was wondering?” 

“What?” 

“About that pearl.” 

“Pearl?” 


THE TWO TERRORS 281 

"Yes,” he heard her sigh. “The pearl that Cleo- 
patra—” 

There was a long pause. 

Carefully in a whisper, he reminded her: “What about 
Cleopatra’s pearl?” 

There was no answer. Only her soft breathing—only 
the rise and fall of her breast upon his own. 

Dead asleep. 


10 

Presently over her head he peered out past the over¬ 
hanging rock. The rain had ceased. Above the quiet 
sea the sky was unrolling that peculiarly depressing blank 
canvas effect that comes just before the dawn. It seems 
to threaten that all dawns must be hopeless. 

There came over him, no doubt, a man’s desperate 
yearning for a smoke and a drink. 

He had matches, he had those cigarettes some¬ 
where. . . . 

He didn’t stir. Once, his lips moved. 

Mount, that ultra-reserved, young modern, was thank¬ 
ing all his gods that he had just managed to get himself 
in hand. 

Decent instincts. Pity, the sense that “dash it all he 
must play the game”—these, by themselves, would not 
have been strong enough to fight primitive passion. It 
had clamoured; taking him suddenly off his guard! it had 
clamoured so wildly: “I want this girl—I’ve got to have 
her! Now!” 

There had come to silence passion something of its own 


282 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


nature, something, too, akin to pity and to chivalry—in 
fact, the head of that family—Love! 

He loved her. He, so afraid of love, had been found 
by his enemy even as the maid afraid of storms had been 
found by hers; and now he knew how he loved her. . . . 

He had got to have her, but only if and how and when 
she would. . . . 

Margaret in his arms stirred, and he feared that she 
might be waking. 

But no. Still dead asleep, she made a gesture natural 
and touching as that of a sleeping baby. With her half- 
closed fist she had struck out, to push him a little aside. 
In sleep, she curled herself up more comfortably with her 
back to the rocky wall, she moved her tousled head. Her 
face, her little, slumber-warm, innocent face still nestled 
between his arm and his chest. 

In utter security she slept on. 

He didn’t move. 

Presently, as he was, he too dropped off into slumber. 

Slowly—rosily—smiling hopefully now, Dawn came up 
over the island. 


CHAPTER XV 


DAY AFTER 


J 


' UST like yesterday ” young Mount had prophe¬ 
sied of the day to follow the storm. He meant 
not only the weather. 

These clever young men are astoundingly simple- 
minded au fond. 

For how could any day, after that night, be expected 
to resemble any yesterday in the lives of these two? 

Too much had happened. Too much and not yet 
enough. 


Margaret, who had slept like an infant in his arms, had 
not even moved when (cautiously and noiselessly) he got 
up. Two hours later she woke to find herself alone. 
Large-eyed, she stared about the rock refuge; dry as 
Gideon’s fleece in the midst of a pearl-drenched landscape. 
Why was she not in her usual cave? 

She remembered everything and blushed scarlet in her 
extreme of miserable shyness. 

When she moved out, putting aside the rain-wet bush 
at the entrance—when she straightened herself, to stand 
upright in brilliant sunshine, she encountered skies of the 
bluest, rocks so coral-red against blue that Margaret 

283 


284 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


blinked at the sight! Every leaf, twig and pebble, washed 
clean by the downpour, shone in the burnished, garnished 
world— Margaret had no eyes for this beauty. Every¬ 
thing else came pouring back upon her in a flood of re¬ 
action. Last night; last night . . . ! 

Incredible, that she should have flung herself into his 
arms; but she had . . . she had cried to him like a child 
to hold her . . . she had stayed, held there, all night! 
Against his heart, and talking abjectly . . . . 

Now, standing bathed in sunlight, Margaret thought 
(as has so often been thought on the day following an 
evening of confidences): “What possessed me to talk so 
much?” 

The man had talked even more; this ought to have com¬ 
forted her. (It never does!) Staring down at scrub 
whereon, looked at one way, raindrops lay like iron-grey 
dust, while, looked at the other way, they flashed in dia¬ 
monds, Margaret remembered every word that young 
Mount in the dark had poured out. 

“Afraid of love!” In the sultry dark with Hades let 
loose and raging outside, Margaret had understood, had 
been conscious of such sympathy. 

All spoilt now. Vehemently she wished that she never 
need see this man again. Vain hope. Oh, but if it had 
been anybody but Mr. Mount ... if she never need 
speak to him, never set eyes upon him more, what relief! 

3 

You see what was happening to her; I see; any woman 
could see; quite a number of men would see. But Mar- 


DAY AFTER 285 

garet Verity did not. In years nineteen, she was in emo¬ 
tion so much younger. 

Ah, these precocious women of the world who think 
themselves blase , whereas the truth is that they lack ex¬ 
perience of everything but the merest frills of life! . . . 
In knowledge of life itself, any rosy haymaker of their 
age puts them to shame. For Margaret, luxury had for 
long choked up, with surface rubbish, the springs of emo¬ 
tion. Until this island sojourn she had remained dormant 
and deaf. 

Now the voice of instinct sounded. Later, she thought 
that she must have heard it long before. But on this 
morning of radiant renewed sunshine, she stood, be¬ 
wildered, burdened, gloomy; fighting against the knowl¬ 
edge that she was being called and drawn into love. 

She made herself think: “I hate a man who is afraid of 
anything! As for the kind of man who talks to you 
about his engagement, he’s a bore. And anyhow I hate—” 

From below there floated up, faintly, his distant hail. 

“I shan’t go down,” said Margaret, as if he could hear 
her. 

4 

What was there to go down for? Breakfast? She 
wasn’t hungry. His fire? She wasn’t cold. His society? 
Heavens ! how it bored her! Bored was she, with the blue 
sea’s empty blink, with the eternal beach of which she 
knew the shape as well as she knew the shape of Mr. 
Mount’s shoulders. 

The place got on her nerves. She was jailed. She 
knew just how the prisoner feels in his cell, the polar 


286 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


bear upon his Mappin Terrace, the bullfinch in his cage. 

Or so she told herself, gathering together every other 
reason for her passionate reluctance to go down and face 
that man. 

She could see herself—a stilted young woman, stiffly 
apologizing for the nuisance she had been last night. 
Colourless intonation—but with that colour rushing up 
to the roots of her rough hair, down to the pearls below 
her throat! 

She could also imagine how Mr. Mount, the protective 
chum of last night, would have changed. 

He would be wooden, embarrassed. “Oh, not at all. 
A nuisance, Miss Verity? Please don’t say that.” A 
voice, once cordial, can take on tones which build a four¬ 
teen-foot stone wall, with curved iron spikes on the top, 
between friends. 

Sooner than face that wall she would stay up here, all 
day. 

Again there was wafted up on fresh and fragrant air 
his distant call: “Coo . . . ee!” 

“Shout away,” retorted Margaret, little-girlishly. “I 
shan’t come.” 

He would probably come up there to see if she were 
still asleep. 

Let him. 

From the sandy cave floor she picked up a slaty slab, 
a pointed pebble. Upon the slab she scratched, awk¬ 
wardly, her first written message to him: 

“Gone for walk. Back later. 

“M. V.” 


DAY AFTER 


287 


“Margaret” he had called her last night. . . . 

A curious hotch-potch he had made of “Miss Veritys” 
mixed up with “Margarets,” with “childs,” with “my 
dears.” Several times “my dear” (careless intimate ad¬ 
dress of the modern young to girl-chum or man-chum). 
Once he had even said “dear”? After that “Miss Verity” 
again; with Miss Verity’s face buried in his neck at the 
time, if you please; with the rough worsted of his jersey 
scraping harshly (albeit reassuringly) against Miss 
Verity’s lips. 

Farcical paradox! 

She hadn’t felt anything then. 

Now in retrospect she felt his touch, tangible as though 
he had left a warm slave-bangle circling her upper arm! 

Ah! if she could take some gigantic magic sponge and 
wipe out of life, as from a blackboard, everything that 
had happened. . . . 

Violently she dumped her slab against the rock. . . * 
What about hanging her pearls above so that their gleam 
should catch his eye? 

No, he’d only think how she always left everything 
lying about. 

Like a wild thing she sped up the cliff-side towards 
a clump of dark ilex, rich and grave in the sun—she 
passed it, hurrying on, in a direction which she had not 
before taken. 


5 


In spite of her late night she moved springily and with 
pleasure—she told herself it was a comfort to have her 


288 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


back to the loathed beach. She thought: “If ever we get 
off this odious island, I’ll forget it and him and every¬ 
thing belonging to it. . . .” 

Here there crowded back upon her the delightful 
“everything”—her new sensation of hunger, her heavenly 
bathes and sun-basking! Her fresh experience of physical 
health, the pleasure that she took in the improvement of 
her own body—for now again she had nothing to feel 
ashamed of during her daily rub-down; again it could 
have been said of her that the solitary beach fitted and 
suited her as no dress artist in Paris could have designed 
clothes to suit her. Now, when she put her hands up to 
her pearls she felt no longer sudden hollows, bony promi¬ 
nences, only the texture of wholesome, satin-smooth flesh. 

Just as she had never been so well for years, she had 
never been in such looks, in such happiness. . . * 

“Nonsense!” she exclaimed, pushing a stray hank of 
hair out of her eyes, then again angrily blushing. 

He had cut her hair— 

“I shall never let him touch it again.” On she pressed, 
her tweed skirt growing heavier with raindrops that it 
gathered from bushes of Cystus, vermouth, lavender, wild 
rosemary, between which she passed unconscious of sur¬ 
roundings. 

Once she thought she heard, borne on the breeze, the 
sound of tinkling bells. 

But that must have been hallucination. . . . 

Forging ahead more quickly, she realized that with 
every yard she was growing hungrier. . . . 

Not his fault, he had called her down to the breakfast 
he had prepared! 


DAY AFTER 


289 


Very vain he was of his fishing, his general efficiency. 
He probably thought he was just the right sort of person 
to be cast ashore on desert islands. 

Possibly all young men thought that? 

6 

Once the bodyguard had discussed this perennial sub¬ 
ject of desert islands. 

(Odd, of course, if they hadn’t.) 

Claude Oddley had announced that, feeling like death, 
he would prefer to go down with the ship. . . . Eric had 
hoped to be the only survivor rather than betcast ashore 
with just one companion. Two days of the unmixed so¬ 
ciety of One would cause Eric to feel not only like death 
himself, but like causing another’s death. The Prince’s 
double had thought it would be marvellous to marry one 
of these South Sea Island girls who knew where things 
grew, and how to plait things . . . wearing just a red 
flower behind the ear. “You ass, it’s the men who wear 
the red flower on those islands,” another boy had told him. 
“Means, ‘I’m looking for a sweetheart.’ ” 

Childish nonsense they’d talked! Imagine being left 
here with any of those boys. “Well, I wish to Heaven I 
had. I would rather have had any one of them—” But, 
on which of them could she have relied? Which of them 
would have known what to do about fire, shelter, food? 
Which of them, especially, would have so nursed her on 
that morning of muscle soreness. Which of all the men 
she knew could have coped with a crisis like Archie 
Mount ? 


290 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


7 

“But, I could have faced any of those others, this 
morning. At least I think I could.” Only— 

None of them would understand last night. Not 
Cynthia, even. 

(This was the first time for days that the name of her 
once constantly consulted intimate had entered Margaret’s 
mind.) 

Imagine if she told Cynthia Oddley: “I was so afraid 
of the storm that I spent the entire night—I should think 
from about twelve o’clock until half-past six in the morn¬ 
ing—clasped in the young man’s arms. Held so close to 
him that I could feel his heart going like a motor, so 
close that my pearl string dropped inside the neck of his 
jersey, so close that his breath was moist upon my hair. 
I held him so tight that I heard the watch glass in his 
waist belt snap. . . . All in the dark I cowered there, 
locking him in my arms. He, talking to me to keep me 
from listening to the thunder. He told me a secret he 
had never told anybody else. He told me what he had 
been afraid of ever since he had left school, and why. He 
talked to me about his mother. About the girl to whom 
he became engaged because he thinks she will keep things 
placid—” 

Here Margaret sighed. Still, on her arm, glowed the 
physical memory of Mount’s clasp, that invisible slave- 
bangle. Echoes of his voice whispered: “Wonderful 
friends one makes . . . they seem to influence one’s 
life. . . ” 

Other memories pictured the features of her own girl- 


DAY AFTER 


291 


chum; peaky, illusionless, be-monocled, and blase . Imagi¬ 
nation mimicked Cynthia’s: “And how soon did this ad¬ 
mirable youth begin to make love to you on his own, 
Peggy?” 

And when Margaret swore that there’d been absolutely 
no hint of love-making from start to finish of that night 
of storm? 

“Come, come. That’s ra-ther tall!” (again, Cynthia’s 
cynical echo). “The lad didn’t take any advantage of 
the romantic situation? Oh, how sweet! Not a fond 
kiss before you severed? Sportsman. Speed-merchant! 
What? Why, he must be— Am I expected to believe 
that he never once tried to . . . flirt?” 

“Would anybody believe it?” Margaret wondered, wist¬ 
fully. . . . “Surely they must. If they knew him. (En¬ 
gaged, too.) If they knew me? Surely then they would 
see that I was telling the truth.” 

Cynthia’s phantom voice mocked: “Peggy! would you 
believe it of any couple in the world, left as you were 
left?” 

“I know that I should be generous enough to know 
that some men can treat even a girl as if she were a 
human being—” 

In Margaret’s heart something reminded her: “Lots of 
people aren’t generous . . . won’t believe. People can 
be horrible about those things! Only your own mother, 
perhaps, would believe. Don’t pin your faith to another 
soul! . • . But in any case it doesn’t matter who believes 
what. If we don’t get away nobody will ever hear. If 
we are not taken off this island—” 


292 THE CLOUDED PEARL 

Here Margaret suddenly stopped dead with surprise at 
what she saw. 


8 

Driven inland by tumult of nascent emotions, swinging 
along like a boxer in training, outer landscape had been 
blotted from before Margaret’s eye. Unseen, there had 
passed that panorama of slopes falling to ravines, rising 
to rocky heights, fringing into groves, fading away into 
ranges white as Alps against the ardent blue. Lost upon 
her, even the point when cliffs had dropped behind!—and 
when she had begun to go down hill again! 

She ought to have felt when her foot, from treading 
uneven turf, had been set on other ground. She didn’t 
feel anything. She heard something. Suddenly some¬ 
thing tinkled. Not bells. She thought her chain of 
gadgets (which, by the way, she wasn’t wearing) had 
slipped down. Looking down, she saw. Her foot had 
struck a horseshoe lying on the highroad. 

9 


Yes, a highroad! 

Well-laid, broad, dustily white, on her right it dis¬ 
appeared around steep rocks. To her left it dipped down, 
down, down into a wild green valley where she could follow 
its course for miles. Like a pale tape measure it zig¬ 
zagged in and out of that greeny-grey map. Not a house 
to be seen! Not a roof, chimney, or spire; only here and 
there hills showed the white stitchery of cascading 


DAY AFTER 


293 


streams. It was as grandly wild country as one could 
conceive, showing no sign of life but for the black buz¬ 
zard, hovering in the blue above her head. Desolate, but 
not without a road . . . then ... it was no desert 
island at all. 

Margaret stooped to pick up that horseshoe—no, too 
narrow, too small for a horseshoe; it was the shoe of a 
mule; of brightish metal as though it had been newly cast. 
Clutching it so that it hurt her palm, she realized at last 
that this was not a dream. 

She had come to the road ... to the way out. What 
was she to do? Follow it? In which direction? 

A few steps took her round rocks to the right. Here 
another surprise made her gasp. It was the most civi¬ 
lized of sign-posts, painted shrill canary yellow and in¬ 
scribed in big black letters: 

“DON DE DUNLOP” 

“France?” gasped Margaret. 

To the right, also, zigzagged miles of road, well and 
truly laid by that race to whom alone has descended the 
road-making genius of Roman conquerors. France? 

Again she turned to the brilliant sign which said: 

“ATTENTION AU VIRAGE” 

and a name unfamiliar to Margaret, followed by the 
number of kilometres. 

Margaret, who had been thinking in hundreds of 
leagues, thinking of the southern Pacific . . . thinking of 
Fiji . . . was it possible she had not left Europe? 


294 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


10 

Hotfoot, she set off back again to that deceiver on the 
beach. 

Oh, she could face him now! She knew he must know. 

She had found him out now; and she was going to take 
it out of him! 

No wonder he hadn’t worried about the wreck, or what 
had happened to the sailors, or to the other boats, or to 
Margaret’s own uncle— 

“All his doing, I’m sure—” 

She could have whistled with glee as she came up to 
the beach, to the blessed smell of food. 

Softly, swiftly she approached. Quite a feast Mr. 
Mount had laid out. Everything that had been left over 
from last evening’s revel. 

Humble pie for him —at once! 

But no. Better fun not to say anything. She wouldn’t 
mention for two days at least what she had discovered. 
She stood, watching him; wondering incidentally when 
men outgrew the age for children’s make-believe; for the 
charade game? 

At twenty-nine, Mr. Archie Mount was conscientiously, 
solemnly laying out, on primitive platters of flat pebble, 
brook-trout that he had caught with his own hands—just 
as if he were not within a morning’s walk of a French road! 
That road must surely lead in time to some French town, 
of narrow, coffee-scented streets, of houcheries, epiceries, 
charcuteties , patisseries , and other provision shops of 
which the French names sound so much more appetizing 


DAY AFTER 


295 


than the English ones? Surely those not-too-distant 
shops would, after their habit, be spilling over on to the 
cobbles their store of seductive foods? . . . But there he 
rooted and wrought, earnestly as if he himself believed 
that but for his efforts he and she must starve to death. 
He was not even whistling this time. 

Gaily Margaret cried, “Hullo!” behind him. “Good 
morning, Mr. Mount!” 

The young man, starting, nearly dropped a trout into 
the flame. Then he turned upon the girl the face of a 
man furious because he has not dared to be too anxious. 

“Oh! You’re come? . . . Do you know how long you 
have been away? . . . Where have you—” 

Here he stopped, violently staccato. For he had seen. 
His blue eyes, widening under their thick black brows, fixed 
themselves upon the mule’s shoe that Margaret had slung 
into her belt. He stared, silently. 

“You may well say that, Mr. Mount,” remarked Mar¬ 
garet. 

(The word “damn” was all but audible in the atmos¬ 
phere.) Frenziedly he wondered how much she had found 
out? Had she been up as far as one of the grey-stone 
shepherd’s hovels complete with climbing grapevines, teth¬ 
ered goat, and tragic-faced Madonna squatting on door¬ 
step? Had she met— 

What would she tell him? 

He said, tensely: “Anyhow, had we not better lunch 
now?” 

This conventionality almost caused to fade away from 
around him cliff, rock, bonfire and to conjure up in their 


296 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


place the crimson wall-papers and ponderous furniture of 
his London club. Politely he added: “I suppose you’ve 
not had anything to eat, Miss Verity?” 

Miss Verity opened great eyes upon him; caught a small 
corner of underlip between her teeth. On the point of 
nervous laughter, she took refuge in what may be de¬ 
scribed as “prep-school wit.” “Anything to eat?” she 
feinted. “Up on the hills there? Not being a goat, I 
don’t eat bushes or grass.” 

Stonily Mr. Mount said: “So I am aware.” 

“Then why ask if I have had anything to eat?” 

“I happened to notice that” He nodded towards that 
mule’s shoe. 

Margaret, unslinging it from the belt, looked at it guile¬ 
lessly. “This? But not being an ostrich, either, I can’t 
eat metal.” 

This deplorable sally (regretted as soon as produced), 
he met courteously. 

“I mean, of course, that it showed me where you have 
been.” 

“Then you know where I’ve been?” 

“Of course, Miss Verity. As far as the road, at least.” 

“Oh, I thought you meant that you knew the name of 
the place? I thought you were going to tell it to me? 
Aren’t you?” 

“What,” asked Mr. Mount resignedly, “is the use of 
my telling you, if you know it?” 

Here he scored his first point. Margaret bit her lip, 
exasperated that she had not memorized the name she had 
seen on the yellow-painted signpost. 

Pause. 


CHAPTER XVI 


TALK 


H OW quarrelsome, the meal that followed! 

There they sat, one each side of their estab¬ 
lished bonfire with its accumulation of white 
thrice-burnt ash, circle like a seabird’s nest of black twigs; 
spoiling for a wrangle, if there were nothing better. . . . 

Excited as she was, Margaret was hungry first; she 
devoured half a dozen of those biscuits—which she now 
knew had been no wreckage, but bought tamely and re¬ 
cently out of one of those French provision shops inland 
(wherever “inland” was). She imagined the small, coffee- 
fragrant den; its posters for “Gibbs” and “Peppermint 
Get,” its nets of onions, the immense, cadmium-yellow 
pumpkins set about its doorstep. She swallowed some of 
that heartening Curasao (also, out of that shop), before 
remarking: 

“So it was all a practical joke, Mr. Mount?” 

He looked at her; apparently hostile. . . . He loved 
her very badly! Quite how it had happened he couldn’t 
say. . . . The short cut to a woman’s affections is to let 
her do things for you. ... We all know that trait, in 
woman . Don’t ask me if this be so with men. I resign 
any understanding of your average, hundred per cent 
297 


298 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


male and his affections. That which urges them to spring 
and causes them to wither are alike hid from one’s eyes. 
Only one apprehends that in the exceptional man—the 
intelligent, the sympathetic, the attractive, the gentle as 
well as the manly, there is found a fairly strong dash-of- 
the-feminine. As in Archie Mount. He had turned— 
slowly, but inevitably as anchored boat moves with in¬ 
coming tide—towards this young, helpless creature left 
to his care. 

She could not meet his eyes. Looking away she said: 
“I suppose you think this is funny? Men would.” 

“I don’t, I assure you. If you mean—” 

“I mean your giving out that your yacht had been 
wrecked and everybody but ourselves drowned—” 

“I beg your pardon, but did I ever say anybody had 
been drowned?” 

“—pretending that this was a desert island—” 

“I hope you don’t mind my pointing out to you, Miss 
Verity, that all the time we’ve been here I have not men¬ 
tioned the words ‘desert island’?” 

“I hope you don’t mind my pointing out that your last 
remark is mere hair-splitting.” 

After this rally, another pause. More food eaten. 

Then Margaret again: 

“But when 1 said desert island you never contradicted 
me. You let me talk about the chance of our being left 
here for life. You took good care not to let me stray 
away from this tiny bit of beach. You pretended it was 
because of the fire or because of my being tired. I wonder 
you didn’t camouflage a few savages out of the crew. 


TALK 


299 


Don’t pretend that you didn’t know I was being taken 
in by this gigantic hoax the whole time. Mr. Mount! 
you can’t pretend—” 

“I am not attempting to pretend.” 

“Not now , because you have been found out,” the 
pseudo-castaway said, crushingly. “You admit now that 
you knew all the time what I imagined. Don’t you?” 

“Yes, Miss Verity, I do. It was what you were meant 
to imagine.” 

“And*you did your level best to keep me deceived.” 

“Yes.” 

“Here we were—not stranded at all! All this time 
we were all within reach of people and towns and tele¬ 
phones and telegraph offices! Utter fool that I’ve been, 
letting you persuade me that we were as far away as 
Crusoe and man Friday. . . . By the way, where are we, 
Mr. Mount?” 

“That I can’t tell you, Miss Verity.” 

She opened her eyes. “Do you mean you don’t know 
yourself?” 

“Oh, I know, obviously. But I’ve given my word that 
while we remained here I wouldn’t let you know.” 

“You mean you promised?” 

“Just that.” 

“Promised my uncle, I suppose?” 

“Well, since you’ve guessed . . . yes.” 

“Was he with us in that boat, coming off the yacht, 
that night?” 

“He was.” 

“Anybody else?” 


300 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“My man Wallace and two of the crew. They landed 
us here.” 

“Then they disappeared and left us?” 

“Yes, they rowed back to the yacht.” 

“Which was not sunk, then?” 

“I didn’t say she was sunk!” 

“No, you didn’t say so. And where’s my uncle now?” 

“I wish to God I knew, Miss Verity,” retorted young 
Mount with convincing fervour. “I don’t know where 
the—I don’t know where he is. He ought to have been 
here, all this time. I was given to understand that Mr. 
Lloyd was going to remain with you, during the whole 
of your—your visit. To tell you the truth—I don’t think 
he is far off.” 

“He isn’t far off,” agreed Margaret unexpectedly. “I 
saw him yesterday.” 

With a biscuit held halfway to his mouth, Mr. Mount 
stared. 

“Saw Mr. Lloyd yesterday? You saw him? What do 
you mean? Where?” 

“I did see him yesterday. At least I thought I saw a 
man with white hair—I wasn’t sure, last night. ... I 
thought for a moment I saw somebody following me. . . . 
Then he vanished. Went off into the darkness ... I 
forgot about that. It was just before the thunder 
and—” 

Here she caught herself up—angry with herself for 
having brought back, with one word, the whole scene of 
last night; storm, flight, hours of crash, flash, strange 
muttered confidences— 


TALK 


301 


Hotly she coloured. She dropped her head, bending 
forward to pick up the end of a bough which, burnt 
through, had dropped, black, onto the paper-white ash. 
She threw it back into the fire’s heart. 

“Has my uncle gone mad, do you suppose?” 

Young Mount was within an inch of answering: “I’ve 
often wondered.” Instead, he followed the instinct of 
siding with his own sex when criticized by the other. 

“Mr. Lloyd mad? Anything but. An uncommonly 
clever, shrewd, able man. Nobody could call him—” 

“I could. I do,” protested the dutiful niece. “If he 
were not completely insane, why should he have taken it 
into his head to do this incredible thing to me?” 

Without answering, Mount turned upon her a fleeting, 
fluent look. 

That look said: “Don’t talk like a little fool. You 
know as well as I do that your uncle meant to sweep 
you out of harm’s way. Out of leading the wrong sort of 
life and getting under the thumb of an utter waster of a 
girl, a sponger and a wrong un. He meant it for your 
good. You can’t say it hasn’t been the best thing that 
ever happened to you?—” 

With this, the look mingled appeal: “Don’t be angry 
with me, anyhow. Haven’t I been put into a rotten posi¬ 
tion? Can I help it, child? Was it my scheme?” 

Further, that glance betrayed: “You lovely thing!” It 
said; “You lovely, innocent, adorable thing! Lovely, you 
always were, even with scarlet grease all over your mouth 
and bootblacking in your eyelashes. And now— Look at 
you! You’re a picture. The most exquisite little face 


302 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


in the world; the body of a young caryatid. Fire-and- 
velvet in my arms. • s * I shall not rest until I’ve got you 
there again!” 

But she had not met his look. They went on with 
their wrangle, eating hungrily, speaking as disagreeably 
as possible. 

“Do you feel justified, Mr. Mount, in telling me any¬ 
thing more about my uncle’s inconceivable plan? How 
long was I to be left here” (angry glare at the cliffs)-— 
“here?” 

“Honestly, I don’t know. Had I guessed it was to be 
so long—” Pause, indicating that every second had been 
purgatory. 

“May I ask if my mother knows?” 

“Mrs. Verity imagines that you are still cruising in 
my yacht.” 

“Ah! Mums was taken in too? That’s one comfort. 
My own mother did not know about this Island of Spoof. 
. . . How many people do ?” 

“Three. Your uncle, your mother’s friend, and my¬ 
self.” 

“Three people. An infamous way they’ve behaved. I 
suppose it’s too much to hope that they are ashamed of 
themselves ?” 


2 

While she rated him she was admiring him. Looking 
like a common tramp, but how handsome! Why didn’t 
Nature turn out all men like that? Even that fair short 
beard which, contradicting the blackness of his hair, 


TALK 


303 


blurred the outline of cheek, chin and neck—even that 
didn’t spoil him. Nor did those clothes, that he had 
lived and slept in since the wreck, disguise his build. The 
most exquisitely-turned-out grandee who ever strolled into 
Piccadilly after spending half the morning under the 
hands of his man—what would he look beside Archie 
Mount? Trivial. A boy-mannequin. 

3 


“Where is your yacht?” 

“In harbour.” 

“Are you going to tell' me which harbour?” 

“I am sorry, but I am not allowed to tell you any 
names at all. I gave my word. You understand. Miss 
Verity?” 

“Perfectly. You don’t suggest 1 want a man to break 
his word. But that you should have been weak-minded 
enough to promise— That I don’t forgive.” 

“I don’t forgive myself, Miss Verity—” curtly. 

“I am glad you have that decency,” remarked Miss 
Verity loftily, controlling her wish to laugh aloud in 
glee. 

For ah, she was enjoying this! Archie Mount all to 
herself, at her mercy, listening to anything she said. Tak¬ 
ing it wonderfully, too. In every respect he was unique. 
Adorable being! What insult could she next hurl at 
him? 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


304 

4 

The trout which Mount had let fall into the flames when 
Margaret appeared was of course overcooked. He took 
it—deliberately Margaret found herself taking it away 
from him. Quickly she said: “Give me that one. I like 
them burnt.” 

As a matter of fact, she loathed them thus. But she 
took the burnt fish; and as she saw him eat her own de¬ 
liciously cooked one there went through her a curious 
thrill. 

“There! He’s enjoying his food,” thought Margaret 
triumphantly. 

The young mother, ministering to the boy-baby at her 
breast, knows that satisfaction. The cave-woman, at¬ 
tendant on her hungry hunter, must have known it. 

The modern woman is a halfway house inhabited by 
three distinct types: the cave-woman, the coquette, and 
the feminist. 

Which of them appears depends entirely upon the man 
who knocks at the door. To some men the flirt is ever at 
home. The demands of other men bring out only the 
feminist to stare defiantly from barred windows. Curi¬ 
ously enough, it is no longer your “strong, silent, master¬ 
ful,” domineering man who successfully stirs the “primi¬ 
tive” woman. He it is, rather, who mobilizes the irri¬ 
tated “feminism” latent in every modern; and he’s lucky 
if he still wins a smile from the cold coquette. 

But the Archie Mount type seems to retain the gift of 
coaxing out, to welcome and to cherish him, that warm¬ 
blooded, half-forgotten cave-woman. 


TALK 


305 


5 

Outwardly severe, Margaret continued: “How long will 
it take me to get to the nearest place from which I can 
communicate with my mother?” 

Young Mount frowned, making calculations. 

“Late into the evening. To get to a town at once is 
what you have decided to do?” 

“Obviously. And—Mr. Mount, have you got any 
money?” 

“On me? I am very sorry. Not a bean. Not even my 
papers. I was rushed ashore. . . . We’ll have to borrow 
money, that’s all. We’ll have to wire, then go> to our 
Embassy.” 

“Ah! Our Embassy. How perfectly splendid to see 
an Englishman again, properly groomed and decently 
dressed. I suppose there will be no difficulty about our 
borrowing money?” 

“I assume not,” distantly. 

“Splendid! Then I shall be able to buy myself clothes 
and things and get my hair shampooed and brushed and 
cut like a human being—and my nails done—and myself 
tidied up. How divine to be civilized again—” 

“You are so keen on that?” 

“Keen. Heavens! You expect me to be anything else? 
But imagine getting back to men and cities. Imagine 
talking to people. Imagine having real meals . . . eat¬ 
ing with silver . . . tablecloth . . . electric light . . . 
carpet . . . flowers in vases. Fancy sleeping in a proper 
bed with pillows . . . fancy a hot bath. Oh, fancy going 
back to everything—!” 


306 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“You mean you’ve hated all this?” 

“Haven’t you, Mr. Mount? How extraordinary,” she 
drawled. “I should have thought anybody but a sea-lion 
would have loathed every minute! Personally, I have been 
feeling like death . . . what do you say? ... I might 
as well have been in prison. In fact, far better. People 
doing time are allowed to see visitors sometimes, aren’t 
they? So they have far more to enjoy than I had—” 

As her voice shook a little, she stopped. During their 
tremulous wrangle they had cleared every crumb of food. 
Now, rising from her boulder, Margaret began collecting 
debris to bury. 

Watching her every movement he said stiffly: “You 
needn’t wash those stones. Why not throw them into the 
sea? It’s been our last meal here, Miss Verity.” 

“How glorious! Our last. Cheers! You mean we can 
start off inland at once? . . . Tired? Good Heavens, 
no! Even if I were dropping with fatigue, the mere idea 
of getting away would make me fit for forty miles. Why 
waste another second here ? I shan’t . . . but I can leave 
you here. ... As it’s your idea of a pleasant spot to put 
up at, indefinitely—” 

“Good Lord! pleasant —hah!” A curt significant 
laugh. “Do realize that I am at least as thankful to go 
as you must be. But I am afraid you will have to 
allow me to come with you, Miss Verity. For one thing, 
I know the way—” 

“So I gather. Very well. Then if you are ready—” 

Her glance of hatred must have betrayed to another 
woman how entirely he was the one man in the world she 
found worth a look. . . . 


TALE 


307 


6 

Leave them, resting as it were before another encounter 
with tongues. 

Return, for a brief interlude, to England—London and 
my own club, where at that moment I was taking coffee 
in the lounge, close to a girl who, over her own coffee 
and cigarette, frowned as if worried; a young girl—slim, 
brunette, smartly dressed from self-assured hat to snake- 
skin shoes. 

In picking up her dropped box of matches, there slid 
off her finger a ring which rolled over the rug. I handed 
it to her; the handsome emerald set in brilliants. She 
slipped it onto the suspected finger, thanked me, and 
came into this story for just a few pages; here. 

“A boon,” she told me, “to find some one to talk to.” 
The brother she was to have met had let her down and 
her lunch had been ghastly . . . “being alone when you 
are at your wit’s end what to do accentuated it!” I said 
it seemed a pity that any one alive, young and pretty 
should be at her wit’s end. 

Following my glance at her ring, and drawing a long 
breath she said: “Yes, of course it is about that. Dread¬ 
ful, to be engaged—!” 

Some people may wonder at my receiving confidences 
from this girl whose name I’d never heard? But isn’t it 
from strangers that one expects confidences? 

The sister, the old schoolfellow, the family friend— 
these are shy—have reservations, cannot let themselves 
go. They know you too well! People who have never 
seen you before and who will never see you again, these 


308 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


are the people who help you (with no ungenerous knife) 
to slices of their lives. The need to ease the inmost soul 
of woes, like the care-burdened honey fly that breathes 
its murmur to the rose was upon that girl in that club 
that afternoon. Only three other members were discuss¬ 
ing committees at the further end of the lounge. 

I asked sympathetically. “What is the matter with 
him?” 

In a cry from the heart the pretty brunette explained: 

“He’s dull ” 

Presently: “ ‘A delightful young man’; people say, ‘so 
thoughtful and pleasant.’ All very well. . . . Why can’t 
he do anything? Oh, he’s interested in things, I suppose; 
never bored, even if he’s never excited. ... So depend¬ 
able. Always does the right thing, knows the right people, 
says the right thing at the right time. So uninspiring. 
People think him ‘so good looking.’ Good features. Nice 
figure. Everybody saying: ‘What a charming-looking 
man your fiance is!’ One looks pleased and says: ‘So glad 
you think so.’ But who cares for a faultlessly good- 
looking man? Well, his eyebrows are too thick. No 
shape, just two dark smudges on his forehead. Other¬ 
wise, perfection,” complained the girl, crushing her ciga¬ 
rette-end viciously into her saucer. “Dances well. Plays 
tennis well. Such a good shot. Men say a topping 
fellow. Women would fall in love with him ... if he 
encouraged them! He never does; never will—” 

There rose before me a complete mental image of this 
correct, presentable, uninspiring swain. 

But I wanted to hear more. 


TALK 309 

“You,” I said, “have annexed the sort of young man 
that countless nice girls are looking for.” 

“Why don’t they find him? Why don’t they take him 
and marry him? He bores me, he bores me. He makes 
me as dud as he is; it’s the only word. Takes the go 
out of me. The moment the poor dear comes into the 
room everything goes flat grey!” 

“Why not break it off?” 

“Can’t break off things without saying why. Not en¬ 
gagements that everybody else says are ‘so suitable.’ Be¬ 
sides, I hate hurting people. I know he would be hurt, in 
his mild way, like a slug crossed in love! Besides, every¬ 
body would wonder and I couldn’t bear any one to think 
that I might be breaking it off because—” 

“Of somebody else?” 

“Yes and no,” she confessed shakily. “There is a man 
I’ve met since I was engaged. Older—well, fifteen years 
older than I am; but oh, such a boy! so sympathetic, so 
clever, so alive; makes me more attractive. Quite bril¬ 
liant I become with him! Do you know men who have that 
effect upon a girl?” 

“I have—heard of them.” 

“And—do you know the sort of horrible tea one gets 
at a railway station?” 

“In a grey china cup as thick as a doorstep with 
‘Return to Welshpool’ stamped on it in black—tea tast¬ 
ing like ink? Yes. Why?” 

“Well, this sort of man makes that sort of tea taste 
like champagne, if only you are drinking it with him,” 
declared the girl in love. “Alone on a desert island, with 


310 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


7 iim, I should feel we were in the middle of a record Ascot. 
He melts the greyness; floods the world with pink light. 
The thickest London fog looked like the beginning of a 
perfect day, on mornings when I went to sit for him—” 

“Ah, he painted your portrait.?” 

“A miniature. A present for my fiance!” smiled the 
girl drearily. “The sittings were Heaven. Then being 
called for at the studio by my fiance, to go out to Prince’s, 
was dropping out of Heaven into the middle of a mission¬ 
ary meeting!” 

“Your fiance didn’t see that?” 

“Doesn’t see anything ever. Those conventional life¬ 
less dummies—to put it kindly—imagine everybody else 
must be exactly like them—” 

Ever more clearly, imagination showed the apathetic 
spoil-sport to whom this unlucky child was plighted. 

“I feel as if I had been positively married to him for 
years” moaned the girl. “Sometimes I remind myself: 
‘Well, do remember you’re only engaged to Archie 
Mount—’ ” 

_M 

But in even tones I achieved: “Oh? Is that his name?” 

“I ought not to have mentioned it, considering how I 
have been abusing him. But it doesn’t matter, does it? 
You haven’t met him.” 

“No, I have not met . . . him.” 

So true is it that a person may be a house, inhabited 
by several persons. Certainly I had not met the world’s 
worst wet blanket who was her Archie Mount. I had seen 
a hearts’ charmer, one smile from whom a girl might have 
considered as a decoration. But to this, his fiancee, he 



TALK 


311 


turned the world grey. Great Ishter, how was it pos¬ 
sible? I suppose the answer lay partly in the spirit in 
which he had entered into his engagement? 

(“It’s panned out well,” he had imagined.) 

“You,” I declared, “must break it off with this Archie 
of yours. Your artist* is another proposition. He may 
happen, or not. . . . But you’ll be all right once you get 
away from this misfit. Somewhere you’ll find happiness, 
magnetism, rosy radiance-and-wine-of-life. But not from 
your Mr. Mount” (slight emphasis on the “your”). 

“Sack him,” I advised. “Oh, my dear! for the sake 
of both your future happinesses, go into the silence room, 
sit down at that table in the window, and write breaking 
it off, now." 

“You think I ought to? So glad. Because I’ve done 
it,” announced the rebel to whom Archie Mount had been 
engaged (dreaming she would keep things placid). “I’ve 
written to him at his club. I’ll go and post that letter 
at once. I can't help it. Poor old Archie. . . .” 

7 

And meanwhile, far away, those two still lingered by 
that bonfire. Its flames had burnt down to the glow 
which, flushing through thick white wood-ash, seemed a 
bed of rose-pink flowers under a snowfall. It needed stok¬ 
ing up; but there was no longer any need to feed that 
fire. This creek would no longer be a place where people 
lived; a home. She had slung those stones which were 
platters down the beach, into the sea. 

Three splashes—four. 


312 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Then silence, broken only by rustle of tiny Mediter¬ 
ranean waves, by dying whispers of embers, by call of 
gulls overhead. 

Then, surprisingly aloud, the sound of her own voice. 
She heard herself ask, pitifully as a child called too soon 
away from some lovely treat: 

“Need we go? Need we?” 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE LOTH-TO-DEPART 

1 

S HARPLY young Mount demanded: “What did you 
say?” 

Why repeat it? Margaret knew he had heard. 
Immediately he added: “Did you mean need we go 
at once?” 

2 


Had she meant that? 

No. Hadn’t it been an instinctive heart’s cry voicing 
her secret passionate wish? Oh, that this need never 
come to an end! 

This was life. Not that other to which he meant to 
take her back. What awaited her? The whirl of ex¬ 
citement and stimulation—of obtaining the journey’s 
end, finding out where she was, getting money and cabling, 
fitting herself out, meeting again her mother—ah! that 
would be wonderful! Her friends—what friends? Mar¬ 
garet’s one friend was here! the bearded, jerseyed, long- 
limbed, shaggy, unscrupulous young hooligan who had 
lent himself to a conspiracy against her. Him she could 
not keep. He would go back and reassume the perfect 
and conventional caller at Hill Street. He was the prop¬ 
erty of the Enid whose portrait he had in his watch. He 

313 


314 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


would go back to Enid; marry Enid. After which every¬ 
thing she cared for must drop out of Margaret Verity’s 
universe. Leaving her what? The old stale round of 
feverishly doing nothing in the Ritz and Rolls—unamus¬ 
ing amusements—rather an attractive bridge jacket. . . . 
“Have you seen the show at the-— Wonderful new 
place!” 

Nothing new in the old life. Here she would have 
been happy. Here alone she had lived. (Need she go?) 
Here health had rushed through her in a joyous vivifying 
stream. (Need she go?) Must the rest of time be spent 
until she was old, until she was dead in looking back to 
these few, fresh, sunshiny, laughing weeks? (Need she? 
Ah! need she go?) 

Every nerve in her young, perfected body clamoured 
against it; demanding why? Why? 

3 

Mount said stiffly: “Just now you did not think you 
would be too tired.” 

Margaret, gallantly fighting invading blankness, de¬ 
clared that she was not a scrap tired. “It was only I 
thought—what about getting in another morning’s swim? 
Couldn’t we take one more day? One?” 

“I am afraid not.” With the word Mount was on his 
feet. (Stay here alone with her another day? After 
last night? Not likely.) 

“If you are not tired, then, we will start.” 

“Rather, let’s start now. (A sailor’s daughter. . . * 
Mustn’t show how horribly I’m hurt . . . behave like a 


THE LOTH-TO-DEPART 


315 


sailor’s daughter.) I’ll just go to my cave, Mr. Mount, 
and collect my things. It sounds like luggage! Of course, 
it’s only my chain and danglements. And your motor- 
coat that you lent me that I have had all this time. I’ll 
get that.” 

She turned to that rock passage, through which she 
had come that first morning to find him beside the newly 
kindled fire. 

Everything reminded her . . . every boulder, every 
cliff-ledge, every bush above it of wild rosemary. “Rose¬ 
mary, that’s for remembrance.” Would Margaret ever 
be able to forget? Not a hope, thought she, as she moved 
away. 

He moved after her. “Oh, don’t bother.” His tone was 
so carefully controlled it sounded bored. “Do let me fetch 
the coat for you, Miss Verity—” 

“Oh, no ; I’ll get it, Mr. Mount.” 

That was all before the crash. . . . Absolutely all they 
had said, these two. Merely she turned to look at him as 
she spoke. Merely she found him closer than she thought. 
Their eyes—blue man’s gaze—sweet, grey, girlish, wide 
regard! Their eyes met; met, hesitated, locked. 

The next instant came the finale to all this pretence, 
this reserve, this “behaving” of theirs. 

Crash . 

For his very next words were spoken in a voice that 
she had not yet heard. 

Hoarsely it broke out: “Ah! it’s no use—” 

Swiftly his two hands closed upon her upper arms. 
A short desperate laugh escaped him. “No use. Mar¬ 
garet. You know it isn’t. Darling, don’t you?” 


316 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Margaret with all her world whirling about her did 
know. She did not even gasp a “What’s no use?” for 
the sake of form. She just waited, coral-rosy and still 
as if her exquisite girl’s face had turned into coral-rosy 
still stone at the touch of those hands braceleting her 
arms. The deep dive of his eyes seemed tangible as any 
touch. This look she did not evade. Even, she returned 
it. She stood, held by hands and eyes, and all her young 
body was one prayer that she need never be let go. 

“You’re going to have me? You’re going to marry 
me, aren’t you? the absolute first place we get to? the 
first instant we can?” She only answered with a widen¬ 
ing of her own look; silent, intent upon him. 

“You will? You’ve got to, Margaret! You will?” 

She thought that if she did not answer he must still 
beg, the adorable one. Yet her voice disobeyed her will; 
it came: “You said you were afraid.” 

“What—?” 

“Last night. . . . You said you were afraid of— 
it.” 

“What? Oh! Yes. I said that. Ha! No wonder. 
Yes, I must have been always mad afraid I might not 
find you. My darling! Mine, mine, mine! I have now. 
Haven’t I? Speak to me.” 

She made herself forget for a moment, keep utterly 
still. Storm of delight was tumultuous within her, this 
girl who had been afraid of storm. Wine, music, bril¬ 
liance, gaiety of a thousand colours had left her cold, had 
left her dormant once. Wide awake now to rapture she 
stood under his hands, and knew in this one moment all 
that mortals seek in wine, in music, in colour, in per- 


THE LOTH-TO-DEPART 


317 


fume, in brilliance, in excitements. Often they seek it 
vainly. Eor since money is to be made out of humanity’s 
hunger for delight, sham delights are feverishly provided. 
Shams fill our city lives . . . elaborate mechanisms seek 
to apply the urge, the uprush and the bubbling over of 
pleasure. It cannot be thus bought. Fatigued and 
greedy and despairing (as Margaret had been), youth 
clutches at these shams, and since there is no thrill in 
shams, believes there is no thrill in life. . . . 

Thrilled now by life’s most primitive happiness, Mar¬ 
garet, who had once wondered if love were “as amusing” 
as represented by “chat out of books,” stood answering 
with every fibre to the touch of the beloved’s fingers, to 
the profound caress of his regard, to the vibration of his 
deeply emotioned voice that found only the tritest words 
as of a fourteen-year-old in love: 

“Speak to me, can’t you? Say it before we go from 
this place. ... I say, you know, we’ve got to go di¬ 
rectly. We shall have to. Must. It’s an infernal shame. 
We must though. Directly. But you’ll never leave me? 
You’ve loved being here? I have. You’ll never leave me 
again after this.” Shifting his grasp from her arms he 
put his own about her, he enlaced her, drawing her up, 
drawing her close to his breast as she had been last night 
—but how differently! He repeated, into her ear as he 
had spoken (with what a difference!) in that cave: “It’s 
no use. Can’t fight this. My sweet. My girl! I meant 
not to say a word until you were with your people. . . . 
Sorry, I can’t help it. Just can’t.” 

From her parted lips there escaped, then, a small 
sigh of: 


318 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


“Oh! . . . Do I want you to? ... I can’t help it, 
either.” 

“Say you care, then. Say if you do.” 

“I won't” 

This admission he drank—so thirstily!—from her soft 
mouth. He kissed satin-smooth flushed cheeks; lips, fresh 
as the salty breeze. Not a thought came to him of how 
he had once with such detachment discussed the possi¬ 
bility of just this situation . . . “it won’t happen. You 
read serials! . . . Won’t happen in real life . . . sorry 
to crash your romance!” He muttered love names into 
kisses passionately as though fear had never been, nor 
any thought of keeping life placid. Lifting her chin, he 
kissed the soft underneath of it, he fastened warmer 
kisses yet upon the proud young neck above that rough 
jersey with the red-lettered “Sweetheart II” rising and 
falling as a buoy falls and rises on the foam-white wave. 
“Ah, my pearl—!” 

Here his love made her first gesture of denial, putting 
back her head. But it was only to drag out of the way 
again that pearl string which his lips had pressed into the 
pearly flesh of her throat. She whispered, rapt: 

“Don’t waste them upon those —” 

Then stopped. Gasped. 

For at this moment she caught sight over her lover’s 
shoulder of something that made her spring away from 
him, drag at his arm, cry out: 

“Mr. Mount! Look—” 

Following her eyes Mr. Mount looked—and met the 
amazed gaze of Eric. 


THE LOTH-TO-DEPARTj 


319 


4 

Yes, it was the same red-haired Eric of whom Mount 
had said, “Charming boy; the very man for Miss Verity.” 
Eric, of all people, had found his way to this scene of 
Miss Verity’s betrothal. No, he had not come as the 
emissary of Margaret’s uncle. Mere flagrant coincidence 
had brought him—that long arm of coincidence that 
stretches out, in friendly gesture, to bring adventure to 
the adventurous. 

Margaret and Mount stared at the figure, medium¬ 
sized, clothed all in glossy russet leather motoring-kit. 

“Eric! It is Eric, isn’t it?” 

“Yppp, it’s Eric” (bewilderedly gazing upon these 
cave-dwellers upon this beach into which Eric’s mere boots 
had brought back the jazz age). “It is Eric. But— 
Sorry. I do know your voice, but I am afraid I don’t 
know your—” Then he recognized the flushed perfect 
face above scarecrow clothes. 

“Peggy? Jupiter Amon! Peggy here? In Corsica?” 

All that Margaret could bring out was a far-away 
sounding: 

“So this is Corsica, is it?” 

“Didn’t you know? Where did you think it was?” 

Eric’s fired-off unpunctuated questions waited for no 
answer. “But Margaret, you knew it was Corsica, didn’t 
you anyhow why aren’t you in Rio and where’s that 
yacht why aren’t you on her and my dear you’ve cut 
your hair? And haven’t you put on weight by Jove 
haven’t you Peggy put on nearly a stone? quite good, I 
think! how long have you been here?” 


320 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Margaret’s questions fused with his: 

“How long have I been here how long do you suppose 
I have been here is this January or June Eric?” 

“What can you mean child how long do I suppose—” 

“My dear —” 

“Well, nobody will tell me anything—there hasn’t been 
time really, of course—” 

“But Margaret my dear tell me where are you putting 
up ?” 

“Putting up? Here!” 

“How do you mean here?” 

“Well, how do you mean, Eric?” 

“Peggy! I mean, where did you sleep last night?” 

Pause (for breath, perhaps). 

In that pause, that huge-bearded fellow that Eric had 
taken for a Corsican bandit strode forward, and caught 
the sleeve of Eric’s motoring-coat. 

“Eric! I say! One moment. Let me explain—” 

“Who are you?” demanded Eric not unnaturally. 
“Have I met—?” 

“Mount. We met at Mrs, Verity’s.” 

“By Jove! so we did. Sorry I did not know you for 
the moment, Mount,” responded Eric with the ladylike, 
engaging mildness of the modern young if taken aback. 
“Been—growing a moustache, haven’t you?” 

5 

Utterly pole-axed was Eric as he afterwards explained 
(not once or twice in this rough island story). 

“Between you and I” (to quote Eric), he was here 


THE LOTH-TO-DEPART 


321 


because he was, for the first time in his life, completely 
fed with the Oddleys at Nice. Cynthia kept on going 
about with such impossible people (quite imposs! quite!, 
he couldn’t tell you), and with Claude so damned low- 
spirited— 

Eric had pushed off to Sardinia— 

Sardinia was tophole (only no butter and nowhere to 
sleep). 

So he had joined forces with a man called Meredith, 
who had been at Magdalen with him, and they had come 
over to Corsica, wanting to see something new — 

(And, by Jove! hadn’t Eric seen it?) 

That day they had hired a Citroen. Come out early 
in her, gone right across the island. 

Bathe in the middle of winter, said the other chap; 
wonderful fellow, but thought you couldn’t bathe* till June. 
Said he’d have a sleep in the car— 

Right. Eric left him there. 

Got into that quiet little cove where he was sure there 
would not be a soul. 

Tableau! “Close-up!” 

This ferocious-looking tough, registering passionate 
love-scene with the wahn-derful-looking girl with an 
O-Cedar Mop for hair, a lahvly little face, rags, and pearl 
necklace complete! 

“Thrills,” thought Eric. “Gaumont people working 
on a new filmings.” 

When the girl sang out and Eric realized that it was 
Peggy herself, who ought to have been on a trip round 
the world, eloped to the loneliest pitch in Corsica with a 
pukka bandit— Pole-axed, Eric! 


322 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Yaw. Yur. Yeh. The bandit then dragged him 
aside, gave an explanation exactly like a “scenario,” only 
true— 

Talk about the Gunpowder Plot! As for old man 
Lloyd— 

And didn’t it show you what women were like, without 
any sense of geography or distance or time? Peggy was 
the rum part of it. . . . How long did the kid think she 
had been at sea? How long did she imagine it took, 
bless her heart, to get to desert islands? Then when she 
was landed—how on earth did she keep from knowing it 
was only a short trip across to the French coast? 

Must have a large hole where she ought to keep her 
bump of locality, what? 

Thus Eric, the original. 


6 

But the subtlest intellect of the century could not have 
done more for them than Eric, shepherding them to the 
little Citroen where his college chum still slept. 

He, by the way, put the newcomers down as freaks, 
artists, members of some queer cult where you sit round 
in circles and meditate. Couple of those, thought he; a 
Cafe Royal Llama and a High Priestess in jewellery, and 
a jersey, “Sweetheart” on her chest and hair like a 
Nazarene’s that had never seen a comb since the day she 
was born. 

Intriguing pair of simple-lifers. 


THE LOTH-TO-DEPART 

7 


323 


Back, back up and down roads, crossing crazy 
bridges over mountain torrents, skirting precipices above 
the incredible ravines of scented Corsica—■ 

Back towards civilization— 

Bleak, forsaken villages flowed towards the car and 
were left behind—tiny, high-set churches—large family 
vaults under cypresses ... a wayside cross. . . . 

Telegraph-posts. . . . 

But, swiftly as the car dashed ahead, frisking terrier¬ 
like up and down the hills, it was only reluctantly and 
slowly that Margaret Verity seemed to be coming back. 

Dazed, she lived through those hours of travelling a 
country that (from being grimly, rockily, bare) sank 
into woods, into garlanded valleys, into roads between 
hedges of African vegetation, of cacti-green-fleshed, scar- 
let-starred. First encounters with herds of tiny skinny 
goats—with other cars—sight of grey-faced women rid¬ 
ing mules—the first ramshackle diligence ... all were 
strange to Margaret, as though she had been years 
away. . * . 


8 


“Tired, darling ?” 

“No—” 

Reaction had come upon her. She scarcely speculated 
upon the vortex of activities awaiting them in the town 
—the explanations, the scenes—what everybody would 


324 THE CLOUDED PEARL 

have to say and do before it came to their rushed consular 
wedding. 

Ecstasy had left her. No prophetic picture rose be¬ 
fore her of their deeply happy mating, of their life to¬ 
gether, of that lovely home in Sussex by the sea where 
all the Downs would lie as playgrounds to those babies 
of hers—tiny Charles and Eric. ... No hint of happi¬ 
ness came to her, yet. . . . Even with her shoulder 
nestling against the shoulder of her lover in the car, she 
was sad. 

No, it was not belated conscience, grief at having ousted 
from this place another girl. Only once had Margaret 
thought of the Enid whose letter to “poor old Archie” 
was even then waiting in the crisscross of the green letter 
board of his club. Margaret had thought: “If that girl 
had cared for him she would have made him different. . . . 
I have made him different.” 

“Everything will be spoilt,” she murmured. 

“Margaret—what do you mean?” 

“Coming back will spoil everything. I don’t think peo¬ 
ple can live in the world as it is now, and yet be as we 
were—” 

Eric, turning, announced how few kilometres were yet to 
make. 

Margaret’s heart sank. . . . 

They reached the bay on the other side of the island. 
To get into Ajaccio they had only to skirt that bay. 

“ Well, the car has been going, hasn’t she?” boasted her 
driver. Needless to add it was here that the car broke 

down. . . . 


THE LOTH-TO-DEPART 


325 


9 

Walking down the ferry-road with Eric they passed, 
tilted up against the turfy bank, a huge, red, glossily ex¬ 
pensive, touring-car. 

A brisk chauffeur was looking to her lamps. About her 
were grouped a party. Obviously English, even at a dis¬ 
tance. One elderly, white-moustached. The others mod¬ 
ern young and smart. A waspish-looking, painted twenty- 
year-old girl wearing a motor-wrap of black-patent-and- 
yellow-suede, with an exaggerated collar that, flung about 
her throat like a scarf, rose to her yellow suede helmet; 
another girl, hidden in furs; attendant men. 

Voices rose upon golden evening; blending, as our way¬ 
farers passed, into an orchestration of: “Absolutely over¬ 
rated place Corsica! What is there to stop on for in 
this mouldy Bath-room taps all come off in your hand 
Everything tied up with bits of string like Heath Robin¬ 
son Ha-ha can’t expect black satin beds and petunia 
hangings in— Bored to tears, Beryl? Filthy little hole 
like Evisa do you not so dusty oh yes perfectly awful 
nothing on the whole Island but one motheaten cinema and 
that mouldy house Napoleon got bored in absolutely 
Napoleon’s beastly brothers round the Fed with the whole 
of the family Bonaparte ha-ha Too Overrated For 
WORDS push off to-night splendid! Nice packet starts 
at eight means eight fifty in this country of hate all those 
islands don’t wonder they call them the 4 lies Sanguinaires 9 

_ _ 55 

“Oh, look!” it broke off. 


326 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Then: “Eric!” The name called in surprise for the 
second time that day. 

The girl in furs, who had been standing with her back 
to the road, turned and showed the peaky face (with 
flame-coloured monocle) of Cynthia Oddley. . . . 

The meeting and greeting of Margaret’s old friends 
(for Claude was among the attendant youths), had the 
quality of those nightmares in which the helpless dreamer 
is pursued by those whom she would with all her power 
evade. 

Cynthia’s “Peggy . . . You? What does it mean—” 
Claude’s utterly disillusioned gape—Margaret felt them, 
as if branded on her. 

She stood there for a moment, suffering. Hardly did 
she hear Mount’s perfectly composed explanation of how 
they had left Mr. Lloyd, of how they were just about all 
to foregather in Ajaccio— 

Scarcely she heard Cynthia’s description of their own 
program. The names of Cynthia’s new friends she did not 
hear. 

“—and we are all off, together, to-night; I’ll write, 
Peggy,” concluded Cynthia, casually. 

But Margaret, as she turned away, knew that she 
wouldn’t write; knew that this was the end. 

The Oddleys and the owners of the big red Rolls were 
now intimate as the Oddleys and the Veritys had been. 
Who were these new people? So like so many she had 
known, in the old life. ' Might be the same people. They 
did the same things, went to the same places, dressed in 
the same way, used the same phrases, thought the same 
ready-made thoughts and considered themselves amusing. 


THE LOTH-TO-DEPART 327 

attractive, intriguing, and bright beyond ordinary human 
kind. 

The young men were the bodyguard of the twenty-year- 
old, anaemic, made-up wasp called Beryl . * . Cynthia 
Oddley’s fur-sleeved arm was slipped into her arm; there, 
but for the grace of God, still went Margaret Verity.: 

10 

In her whole-hearted recoil Margaret again murmured: 
“I don’t want to go back; I don’t want to go back.” 

Odd little incident that reassured her! Just a song 
of a girl in a boat—just a meeting with a group of queer 
aliens who dashed in and out of her life like a flight of 
kingfishers through a riverside verandah. 

The ferry showed its stone jetty; fishermen’s cottages, 
tables spread for a rustic fete surrounded by a merry 
cluster of Corsican peasants in Sunday clothes (“then it 
is Sunday 9 here,” Margaret realized). This group, of 
men in wide black felt hats, of two pretty, half-grown 
drop-haired girls in gaudy blue jumpers with scarlet belts 
giving them the look of peacocks with red ribbons tied 
about their necks, were presided over by a young woman, 
whose deep rich contralto was finishing a song: 

“Oh, les baisers quand ils sont bien donne!” 

A blonde, enveloped in the deepest black of Continental 
mourning. . . . Out of it smiled her blithe, pink, un¬ 
touched face. She gesticulated with tiny fluent hands, 
she stretched out before her feet in high-heeled French 


328 THE CLOUDED PEARL 

shoes, she beamed upon Eric, upon Mount, upon Mar¬ 
garet. . . . 

At that friendly smile pressure slackened upon Mar¬ 
garet at once. Mount, catching her eyes, said in a 
warm, comforting whisper: “Nearly there! Boats com¬ 
ing—” 

Into the first boat they packed with the two girls (who, 
having brought out combs, were combing out their manes 
like a couple of bob-haired mermaids) and with the singer. 
Their ferryman was a broad-shouldered Corsican with 
keen dark face and speaking eyes. Only those eyes ac¬ 
tually did speak. For he was a deaf mute. As his pas¬ 
sengers rocked and shifted into their seats, he mouthed 
grotesque sounds like an infant who cannot yet talk. 

The singer, who had dragged on down to her gay blue 
eyes a coal-black scuttle of profoundest crepe, sat fac¬ 
ing the wide, shirted back of the ferryman, sat next to 
Mount and Margaret. 

Off went the boats towards the stone wall of the har¬ 
bour. Last stage of their journey to civilization! 

11 

Margaret looked back, across the curving bay. Some¬ 
where beyond it lay their magic beach, cut off by screen¬ 
ing hills. Save for two high peaks (snow-covered, rosy- 
white), those distant heights rose clear-dark against clear- 
primrose of the evening sky. Deep, deep and quiet, “the 
bay waters under the boat slid and gleamed; fluid rock- 
crystal. Ribbons of seaweed looped or swayed in the tide¬ 
less water—brown-satin ribbons waving against jade- 


THE LOTH-TO-DEPART 


329 


green satin. Cars, tied by casual French string into their 
row-locks, dipped almost silently. . . . Laughing French 
voices rang out clearly, clearly. . . . Those gaudy pea¬ 
cock girls flashed white teeth; teased the city-clad blonde 
for another song. 

“Yes. Make her,” whispered Margaret, “do make her 
sing again, Mr. Mount. . . 

“Surely you know my name?” 

“But—I think Archie is so hideous,” she admitted. 
“I won’t begin calling you that. Can’t I call you some¬ 
thing like ‘Dick’ or ‘Bill’—the two nicest names for a 
man?” 

“Love you to.” 

“Sure you don’t mind?” 

“Certain. Besides, as it happens—” 

“What?” 

“Some people at school always called me ‘Bill.’ ” 

“Did they?” 

Margaret had a sudden twinge of jealousy of these 
friends who had found names for him before ever she had 
heard his names at all. “They did? I shall always call 
you ‘Dick.’ Dick! your French is so good. Get that 
girl to sing.” 

Young Mount turned his pretty smile upon that singer. 

Already she beamed acquiescence. 

“For you,” said she in French to Margaret. 

What was she? The lovers discussed it afterwards. 
She had all the dignity of a Paphian priestess, all the 
golden heartedness that was Marie Lloyd. Was she a 
music-hall singer? In the chorus? An amuser of sailor- 
folk at Marseilles? 


330 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


Who could say? Possibly money must be paid for 
hearing songs from those lips which, untouched now as 
peach blossoms, must be outlined and greased. It might 
be that those fresh cheeks must be rouged, those downy 
brows darkened—that lines must glare upon the rounded 
figure, that the little feet, now sandy, must mince down to 
the footlights to earn silk stockings and pert shoes. . . . 

Here, on holiday, she still made holiday for others— 
spread sunshine. ... In her, gaiety the modern joined 
hands with primitive delight. . . . Margaret watched her 
glances fly like blue butterflies towards the other boat; 
shamelessly they flirted with Eric—tenderly they turned 
towards the babe on its mother’s lap. 

“She can be both,” thought Margaret, learning in that 
chance encounter more than she could learn in all the 
schools. 

That woman’s look, without words, impressed upon 
the newly betrothed girl a lesson which perhaps in words 
might run: 

“Woman was the last thing to be civilized. So, use 
civilization. Use all its advantages; but don’t let its 
shame master you. Put one hand firmly in that of mod¬ 
ernity. With the other cling tightly, tightly, to the sim¬ 
ple things of life. And good luck, little sister!” 

12 

Feeling herself admired, the Corsican singer turned to 
those foreigners, chattered ingenuously, gave details of 
her day. There had been a funeral; she had been to her 
cousin’s to eat. They had well eaten; had partaken of 


THE LOTH-TO-DEPART, 331 

“oursilles,” had drunk the red wine of the country until 
all their heads had turned like windmills^ 

She added: “ Je m’appelle Aimee.” 

“Et vous le serez beaucoup,” Mount put in simply. 

This mot gave pleasure. It was repeated, called out, 
echoed by the other boat’s crew being rowed alongside. 
Doubtless it would remain in that Corsican family an un¬ 
forgotten tradition, that of the young Englishman who, 
hearing the name that means beloved, said: “And so you 
will be, very much.” 

Margaret begged: “Sing!” 

“Les baisers,” screamed the peacock flappers. 

And Aimee sang. Her reasonant contralto stressed, 
parted, rejoined syllables of an ordinary French cafe 
concert song, from her lips only a poignant lyric. . . . 

At sea, the farewell chantey is called “The Loth-to-de- 
part.” This was Margaret Verity’s good-bye to her Ad¬ 
venture—this, Aimee’s song. 

“Les baisers 

Quand ils sont bien donnes—■ 

Tendrement— 

Langoureusement— 

Les caresses 

Sont mieux que des promesses: 

Oh, les baisers 

Quand ils sont bien donnes!” 

Margaret, meeting Mount’s eyes, blushed rosily but 
did not drop her own. At that moment, far behind their 
heads across the bay there bloomed (cast by the sunset 
on the distant mountains) a blush of rose colour. Won- 


332 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


derful it bloomed; it was gone before the end of her song. 

“Bis!” cried the woman with the baby in the other boat. 
The deaf-mute ferryman, to whom all this music was 
silence, rowed sturdily on mouthing grotesque noises; the 
type of half the world that does not hear the music of 
love. Margaret and Mount heard, nor need they cease to 
listen. His hand sought, found the girlish sunburnt hand 
that was also seeking his. He whispered: 

“This is the second time I have held your hand in a 
boat.” 

“I know.” 

“And, Margaret! I wanted to ask you something.” 

“What?” 

“About last night.” 

“Last night, Dick— Could it, could it only have been 
last night? What were you going to ask me?” 

That singing Venus had broken now, very softly, into 
another of her common, her exquisite songs. Clear as 
thrushes call, rhythmic as waves on that distant shore, 
every note, every syllable sounded. Mount noted the 
tune. Often afterwards he sang it to that translation 
which Margaret had made for him. 

“Here is my heart that longs to love you 
Here are my arms to clasp and close— 

My eyes are near, my lips above you— 

And here glows Pleasure’s deepest rose.” 

“ Bis, Bis!” clamoured the girl cousins. The deaf-mute 
ferryman rowed on. 

“What were you going to ask me, Dick?” 


THE LOTH-TO-DEPART 


333 


“Just before you dropped off to sleep—were you dream¬ 
ing? You said something about Cleopatra’s pearl.” 

“Did I? Yes, I remember now. What made me think 
of it then? I was wondering. That pearl she dropped 
into her glass to drink to Antony—” 

“Well, darling?” 

“If the wine were not strong enough to kill her, how 
was it strong enough to melt the pearl?” 

Mount only said: “Perhaps, soon, you’ll know. . . * 
You know my name for you?” 

Not time for answer then. 

For here was the wharf. Sailors were unloading the 
Mail Boat; there was a plantation of slender masts. 
Beyond were streets of steep houses, the waving of palms 
—the nestling of oranges in dull green foliage against pale 
stucco—the doorsteps of little shops all spilt over with 
wares and babies, the crowds of people of sombre, half- 
Italian beauty; the colour and the struggle of squalid 
romantic everyday life. 

Her lover sprang out onto the stone steps. 

“Here we are. Margaret—” 

Margaret, going out in that last look back across the 
bay, away in the direction of that beach, actually did not 
hear his voice. (“Dear place where I was happy, dear 
place that gave him to me, good-bye—”) 

The next “Margaret” was from another voice. Soft, 
flurried, jubilant— 

“Mother! Mums—” 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


334 


13 

Had this been on an English quay, it is possible that 
the assembled groups might have stared to see that rush 
forward of a well-bred, well-dressed lady who, without 
shame, flung herself on the neck of a tall, handsome scare¬ 
crow of a girl with hair like a bird’s nest and a face of 
pale apricot sunburn. 

“Never to cry before people”—maxim of Violet’s 
youth—alack, how it melted at this supreme moment! 
How unrestrainedly did her tears flow! 

Etiquette had left the earth. Certainly it had left 
that Corsican wharf where, around this rejoicing group, 
clustered Latin peasants with their ineradicable habit of 
rejoicing with those that do rejoice— Not in a hurry 
shall I forget Violet Verity’s bewildered cordiality in 
the face of Aimee’s greeting, Aimee’s fervent shake- 
hands. . . . 

14 

Margaret—disentangled from her mother’s arms—was 
enveloped by a bear-like hug from her mother’s escort, 
and was hailed with: “How are you, my dear? How was 
it? Better than the Ritz?” 

“Much, thank you, Uncle Tom!” retorted Margaret 
with perfect outward heartiness. . . . 

Very well the girl kept it up, affectionately laughing 
at the old man, asking him for details of where he had 
stayed, asking for the whole story of his being caught in 
the thunderstorm the night before that night when she 


THE LOTH-TO-DEPART 


335 


had had her first glimpse of him then on his way to pay a 
surprise visit to their creek and to join them at break¬ 
fast time— 

Not by outward sign, I think, would Margaret ever be¬ 
tray her real feeling on this subject. 

But she would never forgive Uncle Tom. 

Unfair, unjust, illogical as Nature! The fact, sharper 
than a serpent’s tooth, remained. She could not forgive 
what he had done. In spite of its being the best thing for 
her! In spite of her owing to him renewed vigour, fresh 
outlook on life, happiness, love, “Dick” Mount himself! 
Even when to this debt were added the items of ideal mar¬ 
riage, home, and those turbulent treasures Charles and 
Eric—it was to make no difference. 

Margaret would never, never forgive her Uncle Tom. 

15 

Her mother, of course, had in one flash seen what other 
change besides those of physical regeneration, of mental 
poise, of the unclouding of pearly beauty had been 
wrought in her child. 

Violet turned to the other tall scarecrow. She, who 
had never been “quick at knowing what to say to young 
men,” was not quick now. 

Only her gentle face quivered appeal. 

“It’s all right,” he said in a voice that was his guar¬ 
antee. “It will be all right, Mrs. Verity.” He gave her 
that smile which would win him friends whether on a 
cannibal island or at an international conference. 

Then he turned it upon Margaret, who bloomed afresh. 


336 


THE CLOUDED PEARL 


He slipped his hand into the soft curve of her arm as 
finally the cortege ascended the steep, cobbled, palm- 
bordered, dirty, picturesque, littered, irresistibly charm¬ 
ing Corsican street towards our hotel. 

No one but Margaret caught his whisper: 

“Come along, my pink Pearl-—■” 











OCT 3 0 18®^ 









































































